Heartless
by ReWritten-string-of-stories
Summary: {part of the Magically Arranged Marriage series} Battle-worn, Hannah Abbott and Theodore Nott find themselves without much to live for at the close of the War. But dark secrets tie the two weary hearts together and the truth will always out.
1. Chapter 1

To my loyal readers, thank you for sticking with me for so long. I promise to finish Rainbow by the end of this Summer and dedicate myself to Fireworks after that. I believe Fireworks will be my last full length story in this particular universe.

This story rattled around my brain before it stormed its way out, and was written to Justin Nozuka, A Fine Frenzy, Frou Frou, Imogen Heap, Sia, and Emily Osment's 'Drift'. It's already completely finished. I hope you like it.

* * *

_I am just another number...stack me up, I'll crumble and drift along._

**|… H …|**

When I was eight years old, I was obsessed with the color yellow.

Partly because I really liked eggs but mostly because I really _really _liked the way the color looked. Everything I owned was a variation of the color – I didn't even discriminate, I just loved every possible shade of yellow. Everything I owned that year was that bright tint – golden boots, ocher mittens, straw-colored scarves. I liked it so much that I wanted everyone I loved to wear it too. I worked really hard on making a Hufflepuff House sweater with Mum for Alfie's birthday, got Uncle Edward a wooden box that I painted canary yellow in the fall (I have no idea what I expected him to store in there, like a body or something?), and charmed my Grandmother into giving me enough Knuts to buy these sparkly yellow earrings in Diagon Alley. Mum told me once that I'd spilled pumpkin juice down the front of the _only_ white thing I owned on purpose, to get that yellow in there.

She also said that was the year she knew for certain that I was going to carry on the family tradition of being Sorted into Hufflepuff.

I remember how it _felt_ to like it. I remember how much I used to like just looking around my room and feel utterly satisfied as my eyes ate up the honey gold shades and the soft golden sheets and the neon yellow of the walls. Sure every other room in the house was dark blue or dark green, but what was that compared to the beauty of my bedroom? Eight-year old Hannah spent hours in her bedroom just feasting her little eyes on all of it.

Once, Alfie asked me _why _I liked it so much and I think I tried to tell him that it reminded me of the sun, of Mum's favorite dress, of the eggs I liked to eat. I figured maybe since he was fifteen and usually thought I was a baby, he might not get it. But all he did was stare at me thoughtfully before plopping himself on my comforters too.

"So you like it because it reminds you of happy things?"

That had sounded about right so I'd nodded.

"Does that mean it makes you happy?"

I remember thinking about the question as deeply as my eight-year old brain could, then looking at my older brother and saying yes. He'd looked thoughtful and I'd moved over so he'd quit squishing my hand. He was really warm though so I ended up smashing into him anyway.

"Nothing makes me that happy," he'd said after a moment.

I'd been wildly offended.

"Not even _us_?" I'd squawked. "Mummy and me?"

He'd looked at me as if I was an idiot and rolled his eyes.

"That's _definitely _not what I mean, Hannah Banana." I wrinkled my nose while he ruffled my hair, none too gently. "People make you happy, Han. I _mean_, colors don't make me that happy. People do. You and Mum always do."

I remember thinking again, weighing his words again like they were the most important thing in the world. When he slung his arm around me to tickle me sideways, I forgot all about what I was going to say.

Now, I remember being so happy, so _pleased _by just the sight of the color yellow.

So happy…

…just because of a color.

Alfie was right.

People make me happy.

…people made me happy.

…**|…**

"Abbott." I looked up, barely batting an eye when Head Auror McDowell barked my name. "Report finished?"

"Jotting down the last few notes, sir."

He nodded, appeased. The brief downtime between high volumes of reported Dark Artifacts meant more time to file the reports that had backed up in the last few days. It meant more time for paperwork in the big office, more time to examine evidence.

I returned to the report, read it through automatically and emotionlessly.

Two years ago, it would have boggled my mind to know – to _really _know – just how many people are rotten to the core. There are so many diverse reasons leading to the path of evil but the path ends the same. Some of the things that we've found on raids in houses of those who love the Dark would have absolutely blown a younger me away. What other than evil could desire the death of another living thing? How could anyone be that cruel? How could anyone want something badly enough to kill for it?

Now, I only finished dictating the last few items of the inventory of the raid. When it was done, it would go off to Auror Pottleby, the specialist who would detail the works himself. I was no longer surprised by evil, only tired of it.

"Hannah."

This time the interruption came from Brown, newcomer to the Department. Perhaps, I disliked him because he wasn't English. Perhaps, I disliked him because he spoke too much. Perhaps, I envied him his much apparent love of life.

_Perhaps, he reminds me of someone._

I squashed the thought before it blossomed and fought not to frown when I looked up. When he waited for me to ask me what he wanted, I simply stared. He turned red, predictably, after a few moments of my gaze and staggered through his question.

"Do I- I mean, after-after you, right?"

I stared, then shook my head patiently.

He stammered something about delivery and I cut him off.

"Please take it to Auror Pottleby." He looked uncomfortable and I experienced a brief moment of something like pity. "I was already done with it. If he gives you permission to read it, you may."

He looked relieved as he took it from my hands.

I turned back to my desk. One report done, one left to be finished between the lot of us in the two days until Sunday.

I tried to feel something about another week coming to a satisfactory close. Another Friday afternoon spent working. For one awful moment, my eyes opened wide and I saw into the maw of darkness; the endless stretch of days, of days, of _countless_ days, of a family house that held too many memories, of writing reports on how evil humanity could be, of my apartment whose walls were not yellow, of two graves that never went untended, of never being able to sleep peacefully ever again, of a journal filled with entries that were less than a paragraph long, of fear of a little blonde girl with pigtails, being _alone alone alone_. I felt myself crack open, a fault line in my head, and knew myself to be bleeding.

Then I blinked.

The gaping future disappeared.

It passed as if it never were.

"Abbott."

I looked up mechanically.

"Mind helping me with this one?" Auror McCabe smiled. "It's the Blacksmith estate case from Monday. You're a whiz when it comes to evidence review."

I tried to offer him a smile in return but my lips wouldn't turn up in time. He didn't seem to notice the effort.

I abandoned the attempt.

"Certainly."

**|… T …|**

The dream is always the same. Dark skies and a full moon, and a graveyard whose markers are worn down until the names are barely readable. Max, at least, has escaped and I feel incredibly relieved in the dream. My older brother, the one person I would freely admit to putting before myself, is safe and I am the only one left to suffer this hell.

That's alright.

I would do much to keep him from being caught.

In the dream, I walk behind Father. His cloak is dark, almost as dark as a pitch black night, darker even than the cloaks he favors. It is the color that tips me off first, even in the dreamscape, that the evil permeating the dream is real and substantial, that it is close and waiting to descend. Somehow, it never fails. I dream this dream, I worry over my brother, I see the cloak and I know-

_The worst is yet to come._

I follow him mindlessly, or at least…automatically. Mechanically. Like my legs are stuck to this path, to this winding road, to this place behind my Father, to this road to destruction. In the dream, I am never able to deviate from this predetermined pattern. Sometimes, I am aware that it is a dream. Sometimes, I simply watch as if it is happening to someone else. The rest of the time I am fully in the moment, fully in the experience.

It's the third one that has me waking up breathing hard, sweating, eyes moist and heart full.

Tonight, I am doomed to experience the dream in that third way.

I am terrified, mechanical legs moving and moving and moving without any free will. He is a Death Eater – I am one in training. He will live up to his name this night, as he has before, but I am destined to see him uphold the title. I can't possibly live through this again.

The path widens to the clearing ahead, the moonlight is so full and clear and a heavy and startling.

The dark-haired boy on the ground, kneeling, head down. His breathing is labored, as always, and a foot nudges him only to elicit a sound that can only be qualified as a gasp.

I am terrified, I am scared, I am terrified, I want to leave.

The Dark Lord in his terrible glory, the visage twisted inhumanly, his slit of a mouth opening to issue the order and Father moving forward to obey with pleasure.

The light, the light, the green…and I am awake on a nonexistent breath.

The worst part about the dream is that it is not-

-a dream.

I pass a hand over my face, still the shout that rings through the air yet, then stare at the ceiling for another minute.

It isn't a dream. It is a memory. And hindsight flavors the memory with fear, with disgust.

I'd followed him alright, but eagerly. I'd entered that clearing with only desperate fervor, a far _far _cry from the dream Theodore Nott. The dream Theodore Nott is the present Theodore Nott. The past Theodore Nott had wanted to please his father but had been chaotically glad that his older brother had gotten away. He had been confused about some things and deadest on other things. He'd been begging to prove myself, excited, breathless with it. He had been zealous, nipping at the leash up until the moment the boy wizard had died.

It isn't just fear or disgust that taints my memories and my dreams. It's an odd mix of self-hatred and shame and denial, of the heavy guilt of the wrong survivors. It's what keeps me breathing heavily, the hand that makes sure I always experience double-vision daily – view my life as what it could have been if I'd been born to the Light, view my life as it might have been had I given myself wholly to the Dark – and pushes me to penance.

I cannot forget.

The son suffers for the sins of the father.

I can never forget.

… **| …**

"The law?" I arched an eyebrow, lounging as I looked at Max from the comfort of the armchair across from his study desk. "A Marriage Law?"

Maxwell didn't smile; just straightened papers on his desk before meeting my gaze head on.

"It's a mandate, Dodge."

He rarely calls me by that particular nickname, unless he's being very serious. Ironic, isn't it? For most people, their friends and family say their full names when they are in trouble. Quite the opposite for us. I sat up in his favorite armchair and tried to look like I gave a damn in this stifling heat. Honestly, the Ministry had been bound to come up with something to keep everyone from killing each other. I hadn't the faintest idea why he was looking like I was facing the gallows.

"So we have to get married by a certain date?"

"No," he said slowly. "Not quite."

I waited for him to come out with it.

"From what I know, there is no mandate for actual marriage."

"Then why are you looking at me as if I'm heading to Azkaban?"

He seemed to take a shallow breath, looking every inch like the worried older brother I'd known before he'd left the house before the War.

"You will be bound to someone by Ministry Law."

…

I sat up.

"As in-"

"-she's been chosen for you."

I stared at him.

"I beg your pardon?"

"A Marriage Ordinance in every sense of the word," Max said softly, handing me a roll of parchment. As I unscrolled it, he continued. "The details I managed to get are very clear on that. The Ministry is pairing up witches and wizards within a certain age group, on factors that are not…immediately…clear."

My eyes snapped to his face.

"_Random_ assignment?" I asked dumbly.

"I honestly don't think so," my older brother said. "But whatever it is they are using as the process to decide which wizard goes to which witch is so well-protected that I couldn't get even a whiff of it."

Merlin.

This was so much more serious than I had thought.

"So not random assignment."

"No, Theo."

My brain went foggy as I tried to imagine the scope of such a law – nothing like this had been implemented in this history of Britain's Wizarding World. That they could tie you to someone you have never met and enforce the bonding, that they could break up-

Immediately, I went into panic mode.

"What about you and Marla-"

"It doesn't appear to affect those younger than sixteen or older than twenty-six years of age. It also doesn't affect those who are already married, though fiancées may summarily be ripped apart." He smiled. "Thank heavens I couldn't wait to marry her in January."

Muted relief washed over me. They were safe. He was safe.

"Good," I breathed. He needed to be happy. I needed Max to be happy. "Good."

My eyes returned to the scroll blindly. There wasn't much point in me reading it since the bare minimum was outrageous enough to know. And I had to return to work within the hour, within the next thirty minutes to apprise Blaise Zabini of this new knowledge. If any of us had known, we would have shared it already.

They didn't know.

Not that not knowing mattered.

"Thanks."

My brother nodded, stood and crossed in front of his desk to perch on it and look at me. He'd always been the less self-contained one, more effusive, much more dapper. When I didn't say anything, he frowned and dropped a hand to my shoulder. You're not alone, the gesture said, you're never alone. I knew it enough to rack up a smile as I took my leave, but this was about as different as Max and I were going to become. That the Ministry had taken it upon itself to actually…arrange…the futures of wizards and witches under their jurisdiction meant that there was magic behind this.

And wherever there was magic, there was bound to be consequences.

My first instinct was to bury myself in the library to look to precedent. Obviously, this precedent would not be English. It would be international. But it worried me that magic might be behind the law. It would be irrevocable once implemented which, I glanced at the calendar as I strode out of his study, was less than twenty-four hours in the future.

What excuse would they offer the populace? What could Shacklebolt possibly say to condone these actions? Would they even bother? Would London care? The War, so fresh on everyone's minds, made it difficult for those directly affected to really…think about anything else. Perhaps, that was the point.

We were already focusing every bit of energy on recoup.

Apparition took even less time than it usually did for me and I was in my own study before long. Four letters written, addressed to my best mates. My mind was already a whirlwind. What could this woman be like, my future wife? Older, younger? What could I do with another person to worry about? Max and my best mates and Marla were enough for me to look for and look after. And I was going to be an uncle in less than four months, what with Marla expecting. What would she be like?

I prayed that she was good, that she was kind, that maybe she wouldn't mind being pledged to a former Death Eater.

I prayed that she would understand.

I prayed that I would understand too.

**|… H …|**

These days, I wake up the same way I did during Wartime - instant alertness, adrenaline pumping through my veins, fingers curled around the warm wood of my wand. I don't rise into consciousness slowly. I am propelled from sleep straight into awareness, as if Death Eaters wait for me to wake every single day. Back when I was younger, it was stages. It was a lot of blinking and Mum and Alfie barging in and…

Well, I used to slowly come awake.

That hasn't happened in a long time.

Today was no different. I took a moment to ascertain my surroundings were safe before my fingers relaxed on my wand and I rolled over to stare at the ceiling. When I glanced over at my desk, my journal was open to the exact same page that it had been yesterday. I'd meant to write something. I returned my eyes to the ceiling. It took less than a minute before I heard the scratching at my window.

I wasn't expecting anything today.

Cho usually wrote in from Hong Kong on Sundays. If she'd written early, it meant something was happening. But that conclusion didn't make sense either, since she would have used a Plunko's note if it were urgent. So…

…what could this be about?

I sat up, wary and gripping my wand as I headed towards the far wall of my bedroom. An owl, a Ministry owl. For a moment, I experienced acute confusion. Had I forgotten to file the Mansfield Park report? Or had I been scheduled to come in today?

I cursed, opened the window, took the proffered message and paid the owl to leave.

An official Ministry seal?

My coworkers had taken it upon themselves to finish the report, and my intradepartmental communication was _never_ through something as easily compromised as an Owl. Which meant another Department, and something either official or formal. My mind moved faster than my fingers but eventually I broke the seal and unrolled the parchment.

**Dear Miss Hannah Abbott,**

**As of today, the Ministry of Magic has instated a new Marriage Law that will apply to witches and wizards of ages sixteen through twenty-nine.**

**Though this may appear to be a sudden and drastic measure, be reassured that the Ministry has taken the necessary steps and precautions to ensure that each and every witch and wizard is paired with someone suitably compatible. We are matching wizards and witches with their soul mates, the ones that have the greatest potential of providing mutual happiness.**

**It should be noted that these matches are not random. For security reasons, the specifics of the extensive process behind the Marriage Law Mandate will not be disclosed. Be reassured that your match is the best choice for you.**

**The Ministry requires immediate cooperation from the populace, as it will be in your best interest to contact your betrothed as soon as possible. The magic that binds the witch and wizard together is already in effect.**

**Miss Hannah Abbott, your betrothed is Sir Theodore Nott.**

**Further documentation and paperwork will be Owled to you on the morrow. Please sign the attached blank sheet and return it. We wish you good luck with your marriage.**

**Have a magical day!**

_**Melda Babcock  
**_**Department of Mysteries Office****r  
****The Ministry of Magic**

I blinked.

_Nott._

And then I blinked again before the world went black as my mind raced feverishly.

_Nott. _

A Marriage Law? A Mandate? Why?

I blinked stupidly.

_Theodore Nott._

An actual _law_?

It could not be.

The awful feeling that had crushed me at the office returned, except this time the future was a raw wound and not a hungry mouth. This new darkness had a name as despised as He Who Shall Not Be Named, one that had spelled death for my loved one. Instead of the endless stretch of days, I saw his face. His face blotted out the days, blotted out the reports, blotted out the apartment and its grey walls, and the loneliness until all I could feel was hatred swell up like a balloon inside my chest. I gasped horribly, tried to suck in air until I could breathe past the hatred, tried to swallow the moan rising in the back of my throat. And I was expected to marry his son?

Marry the son of the man who had taken Alfie from me?

Theodore Nott.

It could not be.

The hatred made it hard to feel incredulous but, slowly, incredulity crept in.

_This is a dream, _I thought viciously. It was a terrible dream and it could not be.

I was not consciously aware of my decision to snatch the nearest cloak off the peg and Apparate myself to London. All I knew was that his father's face hung in front of my vision like a moon, like a great big full moon, ready to decimate the life that I'd scraped together in the ruins of the War.

The Ministry was chaos. Witches and wizards waiting in a harried line for the moving tollbooths. I bypassed it altogether and used the toilet for bureaucrat workers. I refused to believe this was actuality. It wasn't much better on the inside but I threw myself into a full lift and ascended to the Department of Mysteries.

The first familiar face was that of Neville Longbottom, who was looking uncharacteristically handsome and desperate, in front of the lift. He and three other Unspeakables seemed to be all the Ministry had put out to man the gates and speak to growing crowd of witches and wizards. I elbowed my way to the front. He would clear this up.

He would know.

"Neville," I said quickly. "Neville!"

His eyes locked on my face before a flicker of recognition cross his own. Before he could say anything, a wizard on the other side of the crowd had shouted something that sounded an awful lot like fire. The crowd surged once, one of his fellow Unspeakables broke into the crowd to find out what was the matter. At once, Neville Longbottom's eyes zeroed on mine again.

"Is it true?" I shouted frantically above the noise. I shook the parchment in my fist. "This is true? It's law?"

He looked as if he regretted saying yes. It was in the way his eyes didn't slide away, the way his face went blank. Almost as if he knew whom I was paired with.

"There must be someone else I can talk to," I said doggedly.

Neville Longbottom shook his head.

"I'm sorry, Hannah." His face resumed its usual stoniness, as if I'd settled him. "There's no one at the moment. We're so swamped that I can barely keep this crowd back. What's done is done. Magic…magic is behind it."

Magic.

I went limp.

Magic was behind this?

Magic was _behind_ Theodore Nott?

It would not be borne.

**|… T …|**

When I ripped open the letter the next morning, I'd settled into a state of numbness that could only come with a sleepless night. The numbness didn't lift when I'd read the name _Hannah Abbott. _For a minute, I blinked over the need to lie down and tried to remember why that name sounded vaguely familiar.

Had she been in my Year?

If she had, she hadn't been Slytherin since I'd have known. My brain conjured an image of blonde hair and light eyes, and other than Marietta Edgecombe I couldn't really remember any blonde Ravenclaw girls – my Year or otherwise.

"Hannah," I said to myself. "Hannah Abbott."

Zabini would know.

I wasted no time on the Plunko's notepaper since we only corresponded with that when there was something urgent and business-related. And I didn't have a day to wait for an Owl. As I reached for the Floo Powder on the mantel of my bedroom fireplace, a sheet shimmered on the nightstand.

I stopped, snatched the sheet up without looking at it, and stumbled through the fire and into Zabini's own bedroom. Predictably, the man was awake. Not only was he awake but he looked freshly bathed and dressed for the day. He looked as if today was simply another day. When his eyes landed on me, his jaw dropped.

"Theodore?"

I paced the carpet in answer. He called for tea.

"Who is Hannah Abbott?" I asked shortly.

His eyes widened.

"That's your pair?"

I nodded.

"Pansy Parkinson."

I stared.

"Merlin, she's _yours_?"

He nodded.

"You haven't slept?" he asked drily. "That worried, eh?"

But his face shuttered almost as soon as he asked the question. I had no time to wonder why.

"Hannah Abbott," he said slowly. "Our Year. Hufflepuff Halfblood – if I remember correctly, she made Prefect for her House. Not sure where she's from but, unfortunately, both her mother and brother were killed during the War."

I could feel the blood leave my face.

Blaise watched me in silence. But he knew me too well to not know what I was thinking.

"I'm sorry, Theo."

I sat down heavily.

A Hufflepuff whose family was killed during the War by Death Eaters. The scenario was the _worst _possible one.

"Who-"

Blaise shook his head. So the perpetrators were unknown? This was so much worse than I'd thought.

"Do we know where she-"

He shook his head again, a bit blankly.

"I know a lot," he said softly, "but I don't know all. There's a good bet that she's in London. I may or may not correctly recall that she works at the Ministry but that's as much as I remember, mate. I'm sorry."

That he apologized again made me feel much worse than I had before.

Hannah Abbott, my intended, was a victim of the War. Her family had been murdered by the Dark Lord and his Death Eaters. She was a Hufflepuff, had been enough of an avatar of her House to become Prefect, and was a bureaucrat now even with whereabouts unknown. Should I find her first? I thought feverishly. Should I seek her out myself?

Perhaps enough of the fever was on my face since Blaise gave me a strange look before he summoned a house-elf to bring about a spot of tea. When the house-elf departed, he dropped a hand on my shoulder.

"I'll try and find out what I can about the deaths."

I nodded blankly.

The tea came.

…**|…**

Fatigue set in slowly, oh so slowly, and debilitated my mind with its presence. By the time I returned to my own home, I was ready to simply sink into the bed with a Sleepless Potion to ensure some sort of peace of mind. Thankfully, Zabini had talked me out of finding her myself. How I had intended to find her…I'm uncertain. The fatigue was ruining everything.

I had to write her a note.

I cannot begin to try and describe to you what it felt like to sit down to pen her letter. Had the Ministry imagine boundless joy with their news? Had they envisioned witches and wizards writing…happy…words to the person they'd _just_ found out they were bound to for the rest of their lives? Were we supposed to fall in happily, quickly, realign our friendships and relationships to fit this new person in?

Were we supposed to say anything useful at all?

I had no idea what to say to her, this girl.

Who was she? What had her Mum and brother been like? Was she alone in the world? Did she…

…was she happy? Could she be happy? Could I make her happy?

I don't even remember what led me to writing the introductory thing that I put to paper – it was superfluous, almost perfunctory, in how bare the words seemed. Introduction to myself, really, and that I would like to meet her sometime soon. I dropped off to sleep soon after my owl winged its way through the sky.

I slept like the dead, all day, until early the next day when I was awoken by the familiar scratching of an unfamiliar owl.

The letter was mine…seal intact.

**|… H …|**

I couldn't have brought myself to touch it, regardless of the owl pecking my fingers away. It had been shocking enough to realize whose owl it was. God knew I didn't even want to let that creature into my home but it was persistent. I took the letter, gave it some food, sent it on its way, then promptly sent my own beautiful Sophie off with the thing unopened. The rest of the night was spent trying to get back to sleep, and the morning was miserable.

It was miserable enough for me to know I couldn't live this way.

Neville Longbottom might have thought there was nothing that could be done but I wasn't willing to just let it go like this. Since I'd opened the letter, a faint thrum of intense hatred was in the background of all my mental processes. There _had _to be something in old law that prevented this kind of magical tying. Or maybe I could ask them to take me out of the pool altogether? Or maybe they could draw again – just me and a pool of eligible older men? I knew no one that could be called on to help and I still had no clue to whom Cho was attached.

I wasted no time in whipping out the Plunko's that directly connected me to Cho.

_Who is it, Cho?_

_**You tell me first.**_

Even Cho didn't know who'd been responsible for the deaths so I saw no reason to hesitate. But the fact that he was a Death Eater… His name conjured up that same bubble of immense hatred, an emotion so dark and deep that it took me a few moments to force my fingers to move over paper.

_Theodore Nott._

A full minute passed before her neat writing scrawled across the sheet of parchment.

_**I am so sorry.**_

As was I, although all the connotations of the word 'sorry' added together could not adequately…God, why. I tried to push it away as best as I can and forge ahead with the conversation.

_You?_

_**Longbottom.**_

My jaw dropped.

_Fucking hell, how did that even-_

I almost finished my sentence then thought better.

_**I don't know but I am on my way back into the country. Portkey at 5:30, dinner at Enchanted Eats at 6?**_

_Plunk me when you get here._

Only habit forced me to make an entry in my journal, and the entry was just the verbal diarrhea of the insanity rolling around my head. How could this _be_? I'd long ago stopped believing in the idea of a Creator, of a Power, of a just Being that overlooked things. I'd stopped believing in the infantile saying that good things happened to good people. _Bad _things happened to good people. Terrible, unspeakable, unforgivable things happened to good people. Sometimes those same things happened to bad people too. But there was no fairness, no sense of justice in the world unless it was justice meted out by your own human hand. Because I could not love Theodore Nott. I couldn't even look at him as a person, as an individual, as anything other than the son of Nott Sr. I could not imagine that justice would include a plot in which my….my…my life was tied to his, without my consent, irrevocably.

Perhaps my life hadn't been sunshine before this Marriage Law, but it could be nothing other than hell now.

You have a plan for yourself. You have an idea for what you want your life to be. You have goals you would like to meet and a purpose you would like to fulfill and then suddenly…what? None of that matters a whit in the long scheme of things because you are now tied to the son of murderer? Someone who might be a murderer himself? A wearer of the indelible Dark Mark? Someone who fought on the wrong side, the _evil _side, someone who you would have given anything (_anything at all_) to avoid? And then they tell you that this person is The One?

The Ministry was a steaming load of shite.

I could not be the only person in this situation. I couldn't.

Jesus.

I couldn't stew like this. I couldn't. I had to move, go, do something. Damn it, a whole day to wallow didn't sound like day well-spent to me. The hatred surged momentarily and I tried to shove it away. So I got up, took a bath, and went in to work.

"Abbott, what are you about?"

I shrugged as I passed Auror McDowell and sat at my desk. Everyone else functioned like a dysfunctional family unit here but if they were family, then I was the distant relative that no one was quite sure what to do with. I suppose McDowell would be the gruff uncle. Why he was asking any sort of personal question was beyond me.

"Just thought I'd get a head start on this week's work."

When I looked up, he was eyeing me like I was a recalcitrant daughter.

"Sir?"

"You fall under the Law, don't you?" I froze. He continued. "That's why you're here. He that bad?"

Damn it, emotions really were killing me. I was still frozen.

Without another word, McDowell returned to his desk.

"I've got two reports that I could use your keen eyes on."

They floated through the air before he finished the sentence, and landed on my desk loudly. I couldn't fight the wash of relief. Nothing was said for the next seven hours. I got up, got lunch, came back, pushed through his two reports and finished one for Auror Blackstone. The sifting through the details was mechanical but complete. It blocked everything out as I scoured for inconsistencies, details, and missing information. By the time I finished, the falling twilight and pitter patter of rain filled the room.

"Abbott."

I looked up immediately to see my boss standing in the doorway.

"Sir?"

He examined me closely before shaking his head.

"Tomorrow," he said gruffly, and waved a hand.

I nodded and got back to the incident report for the little bit of time of left.

Cho and I weren't really very touchy people. I didn't often think about the way I used to be in Hogwarts because it was difficult. But when we met in front of Enchanted Eats, we stared at each other for only a moment before meeting halfway.

"I'm so sorry, Han," she whispered into my hair. "I wanted better for you."

The awful bubble of hatred curled up in my throat. I forced it back.

"I know," I whispered back.

There was nothing else I could say so I squeezed her a bit harder before I let go. When I stepped back, I tried to summon a smile.

"Hong Kong?"

She rolled her eyes.

"As chaotic as always." She said that but she really did love her family. "My sister-in-law is pregnant and it was a big celebration."

Now _that_ brought a genuine smile to my face.

"Should I be calling you Aunty Cho already?"

Cho smiled back then took my arm to lead me into the restaurant. She was regal enough now to command anyone's attention and we were seated before anyone else.

"Have you talked to Neville?"

Cho looked startled.

"Why should I? Did Nott try to contact you?"

I looked at my plate and reached for my cutlery, nodding slowly.

"What did he say?"

I shrugged. She narrowed her eyes.

"How did he say it?"

"Owl." I took a bite of the chicken. It was very good. "Let me try yours, Cho."

She wasn't mad when I reached across the small table for her beef.

"You didn't look at it," said Cho, "did you?"

I shook my head.

"I haven't talked to Neville," she replied firmly, "and don't think I will unless I have to."

I sneaked another bite from her plate.

"Why? Independence?"

When she shook her head, I stared at her. I didn't understand. She had a great one – an amazing one, really. Neville was quiet and steady, and more over he wasn't bad to look at in the slightest. He'd grown into himself and grown into his power, and while every now and then you could see a peek of the shy nervous boy he'd been before, he was also a dependable man. He was honorable. And, most importantly, he was _good_.

He was a good person.

"I mean, I love my independence and I don't want anyone to get in the way of that but…he's not my choice. I don't want this so I'm not going to go after him."

Understandable.

"You really should try my chicken," I said around another bite. "It's very good."

**|… T …|**

I'd slept at my brother's last night. Every time he cooed at her stomach I pretended to gag, but when he wasn't looking, I asked Marla if I could speak to my niece too. We didn't actually know if it was a girl but I had a funny feeling that she would be. Max and Marla didn't care either way. I could admit to myself that I did it because I needed family, needed the quiet assurance of my brother's presence, needed to see him interact with Marla and look at what life with love could be like. He had dragged me off to his study again, handing me a cup of coffee.

"Theo, who is she?" He'd sat back down, cradling his own teacup. "I assume that something is very wrong."

I didn't feel like coffee but I sipped it anyway.

He waited me out.

I sighed.

"Hufflepuff."

When I looked up, his face was an odd mix of surprise and disbelief. Aye, that was pretty much what I felt.

"A Hufflepuff?"

I nodded.

"She was in my Year."

"Merlin-"

"Not the worst of it, brother," I continued with a sigh, "her brother and mother died during the War."

Max's face had slid into a very faint look of horror. My brother had always been quite expressive.

"Who is she?"

"Hannah Abbot."

The look of horror immediately became more apparent, before slowly sliding into one of abject pity. He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something and then shut it immediately. We'd both stared at the fire before I trundled off to bed.

Was she angry? Was that why she didn't respond? Was it a mistake or a pointed response to an overture she didn't want? What the hell was I supposed to do now? What _could_ I do?

I'd figured out for myself what she did for a living.

An Auror.

I don't think my heart could have dropped any further.

An Auror, by way of Hufflepuff, whose Muggle mother and beloved brother had been presumably killed by Death Eaters.

_Fuck, fuck, __**fuck**__ me._

No matter which way I went, I was completely boxed in. She was the exact opposite of a woman who would ever be content to be tied to anyone who hadn't fought for the Light. And my father had been nowhere as famous as Malfoy but…my last name would be enough. She would have known what I was before she'd went any further. Perhaps her return of the letter really was her answer.

I nursed my tumbler of Firewhisky and stared into the fire.

There was nothing for it. I had to try and see her. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

**|… | …|**

"Is Auror Abbott here?" I asked, staring at the grizzled older wizard in front of me. Bottle green robes and a neatly cut beard was at odds with the scar that dragged the left side of his face down.

He stared back.

"You are?"

A million things went through my mind but I hadn't the faintest idea what to say to actually get myself in there. Thankfully, providence stepped in and the door widened.

"Did someone say my…"

She was…pretty. I hadn't expected it. Her voice was lyrical, a lilt there that I couldn't place. Her blonde hair was streaked with slightly darker colors and swept up into a bun so tight that it looked painful to me. She'd been looking at the grizzled wizard when she'd started to pose her question but was already turning to look at me. And when she saw me, she trailed off.

Her eyes were brown, large in a face that looked a like it wasn't used to being thing, and they were void. As in…they were void. She was as blank as a slate, no emotion, not even the typical so-called 'spark' of recognition. Just her voice trailing off and her mouth closing and her blank blank eyes taking me in. For a moment, I was frozen and dry-mouthed.

I took it all in in a second.

She knew who I was.

"Are you Hannah Abbott?"

She didn't so much as nod in acknowledgement.

"I'm-"

"I know who you are." Her voice was cool and detached, much the same as it had been when she'd been asking her superior who'd been saying her name. She turned to him. "I'll be back in five minutes, sir."

She didn't wait for her superior to say anything but walked past me unhurriedly. I followed without question. If she knew who I was, then she knew what I was. She'd done her research. When we got to what passed for a break room in this Department, she opened the door and went inside and took a seat. She watched me sit across the table from her.

In the light, she was familiar. I vaguely recalled her being close to some talkative boy, a Prefect. I instantly snapped to attention when her mouth opened.

"Why are you here?"

I turned the question around in my head.

"We're to be married," I said slowly. "I wanted to meet you."

"Is that why you are here?"

I watched her watch me and tried to understand her.

I had- I mean, I did. Want to meet her, I mean. And she was not really what I'd expected for although her lack of enthusiasm was so much more than I'd hoped for. I wasn't expecting open arms and a welcoming committee and I didn't know her in the slightest. Her face remained unmoved, those eyes unemotional.

"I want to know you."

Her lips thinned and something flashed in those dead eyes, so suddenly that she looked hard.

"Well, you've met me. We've had a single class together."

Another strike against me. She switched tack suddenly.

"What is it that you do?"

"I co-own a legal and financial services company."

"Legal?"

I spread my hands.

"The Muggles are ahead of their time in that arena. While we have our own version of what they call a tribunal and a jury, there is no real outlet for smaller disputes or detective services. Wizards are good at finding things. But when they aren't…my partner and I step in. And if they need to investigate or require counsel, we do that too."

"For a fee, of course."

It was her tone, more than the words, that summed up what she thought of me. I said nothing.

"You've accomplished what you came here for," she said coolly. Her hands pushed against the table and she stood, steadily. "I must be getting back to my office now."

She strode to the door before I even opened my mouth.

"I didn't."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I didn't accomplish what I came here for," I said firmly. "I want to know you. I want to get to know you, you know, and I can't do that in five minutes."

She looked at me blankly for a minute before turning on her heel.

I watched the space that she'd occupied and wondered if it would feel cold when I passed through it.

**… | …**

The male papers were delivered four days later. It reiterated that the Ministry of Magic had chosen the perfect person for me. It explained that it hoped that we'd met in the seventy-two hours after the Marriage Law was implemented. To force closeness, the magic would drain the energy right from our bodies if we weren't together. Some mystical mumbo jumbo about clashing auras looked like it was talking about getting along. If we didn't get along and subsequently weren't physical with each other, then every man with functioning equipment and a like for lady parts would be after her until I got physical. Or vice versa. I didn't have to marry her, the papers seemed to say, but I did have to be with her. Another segment explained that I was every protective instinct in me was going to roar to life…literally. The exact phrase was "the protection instinct will be almost animalistic…it will overwhelm everything else". All of this was delivered with the very reassuring line that that was as much as the Ministry was "sure of for now".

No news was good news, figuratively.

I wasn't in it by myself.

While Zabini seemed to be uncharacteristically happy with his future wife, Malfoy had gotten Granger. This looked to be as bad as my case, if not potentially worse. Their first meeting had ended with her threatening him and him yelling. Their time together had culminated fiery blow-out after fiery blow-out. His instincts had kicked in to rescue her from a mishap somewhere in London but then something had happened the next morning. Whatever happened had made Malfoy so angry and unsettled that Zabini had organized a stag night to cheer Malfoy up. That, predictably, ended in a bit of disaster.

Fast-forward to today and I'd had a full week with no hint of Hannah Abbott. The nightmare about the young man in the clearing was repetitive, constant, a Muggle movie that played over and over without end every time I closed my eyes. The papers at least cleared up the mystery of the sudden onset megrim. I'd made it through work without much fuss but had dropped like a stone into bed the minute I'd crossed my threshold. Perhaps a potion and some sleep. I wasn't much for potions…and didn't that say enough?

I closed my eyes and the blood rushed.

I opened my eyes and the rush receded.

"Damn it all," I muttered as I sat up, "awake it is then. Tippy!"

The house elf appeared immediately.

"Master?"

"Sleep potion from the silver cupboard, not the blue."

Obviously, I needed the help. Just as I laid back down, the fire glowed green and Blaise's head floated in the flames. I dragged myself out from under the covers and dropped to the floor a safe distance away.

"Looking a bit ill there, mate. Do you need anything?"

"Trying a sleep potion first," I said drily. "Have you had a look at the papers with Drake yet?"

His smile went dry too.

"They've only decided to shackle too people together for life…with magic…with no way to break free…yes, we've had a peek. Will you see her tomorrow?"

If this headache didn't disappear, I would have to.

"I'm trying to respect her space," I said quietly. "She doesn't want this."

"But neither do you," Zabini frowned. "And I know you, mate, I do. Theodore, you're a good per-"

"She doesn't want this."

Logs crackled in the silence. The fire burned a little brighter as he thought of ways to say what he thought I needed to hear. I stared at one particular log under his chin that must have been perfect kindling. As I watched, it went right up in flames.

"She's trying to get it annulled."

"I-…what?"

He bobbed his head in the fire like it was a yes/no question.

"Annulled, mate. As in break off your marriage."

"But-"

-we weren't married. Yet.

"I know," he said. "But she's trying to prove a point. Word gets around slowly but I heard from someone else that she wrote something of a defense of her plea up. I can't get a copy of it though."

Merlin, she _really_ didn't want this.

And that made me feel horrible. Was it me? Or would it have been any man? Or perhaps was it that I was a Death Eater? I understood her reservations if it was the last accusation and I didn't blame her ( I didn't). I just…

_Merlin._

I was reaching for parchment and a quill before my mind fully processed the action. Zabini watched the movements with veiled interest. I summoned a faint smile for him.

"Thanks. Parkinson?"

It was the only prompt he needed. His eyes went dreamily unfocused for a very brief moment before he smiled beatifically and told me they would be meeting tomorrow in Diagon Alley for lunch. After that, some sort of outing at Cornelius Park. It was morbidly nice, listening to someone who had such high hopes for the next day.

While he talked, I wrote. I asked her whether she would be at work tomorrow, whether she was experiencing any symptoms of malaise, and if we could meet up the day after tomorrow. By the time I was done, Zabini was done too.

"You're looking worse by the minute. I just wanted you to know," he said gently, "so get some rest. I'll see you on the morrow?"

Aye.

Tomorrow.

… **| …**

"Thank you for meeting me," I said politely.

More like thank God for the circumstances. Hannah Abbott looked worse for wear. During the first meeting, I'd gotten the impression that her face wasn't naturally so thin nor her eyes so large in her face. It was tripled now. Her hair was pulled away from her face, escaped strands tending to curl at the ends. Bags under her eyes looked like dark smudges, and her gaze was slightly bloodshot. The worst part was that all of this worked together to make her dead eyes even more lifeless. I was shocked by the figurative rearing of my instinct's head – I was already feeling a need to reach across the table and touch her face.

I reined it in.

"Have potions worked at all for you?" she asked in her detached voice.

"Less than moderately well," I replied. "You?"

She shook her head.

"Less than poorly. I don't usually sleep well and now I sleep even less."

As soon as the words were uttered, her expression looked as if she'd given something away. Perhaps she didn't want to talk to me at all. The desire to touch her was still there. I nodded.

"How many hours do you work?"

"Excuse me?"

"Hours? Work? Do you keep a normal business day or do Aurors work at all times?"

"All times," she said with obvious reluctance to share intimate details, "depends on the time and what's happening. This happens to be a slow week."

"We need to see each other," I said slowly, "because we cannot function this way. Today, we should try for an hour. But we need to work out a schedule."

She looked positively neutral.

"When…when can you meet tomorrow?"

"For how long?"

"For a significant stretch of time," I said firmly. "At least an hour."

"I don't know."

"Because your schedule is all over the place?"

She shrugged.

"Slow for us means a little more time to sleep but not what it might mean in your line of work."

I tried not to wince at how perfectly bland she was.

"How much time to sleep?" I asked curiously.

"Five or six hours on a good night."

Merlin's Balls, that sounded rough. To be honest, since Zabini and I had opened up our business, I hadn't had that much time to think about what working hours were like for everyone else. Malfoy's businesses thrived under his mother's investing acumen and Malfoy's own brand of impatience. Crabbe and Goyle were living off whatever their estates brought in, and all their parents were still alive. I hadn't ever known someone who worked for money. And even though I was working, I wasn't working _for_ the money. I was working because…

Well, because I wanted to. I wanted to work and I wanted to help. A lot of people lost a lot of things thanks to the War.

I nodded mechanically. She glanced around the café impatiently. We stared in opposite directions and inside my head I winced. I wanted this to be better. I didn't want her to not want this. I wanted to want this. I wanted to not feel the weight of a thousand sins sitting in my shoulders. I wanted to act on whatever this magic was doing to my instincts – to touch her face and assure her that this would be okay. I wanted to expel these ghosts, these anxieties, this feeling that nothing could ever be right again. For a moment, I selfishly wanted to be able to do penance without caring. But I didn't know how. And I'd been selfish enough for three lifetimes so I couldn't start now.

So I ordered tea, and stared in the other direction, and said nothing.

Forty-five minutes went by.

We parted ways at the door without a word.

**|… H …|**

After that first week, when I'd gone to try and get it repealed, I'd understood that magic was at work.

No one would ever entertain the idea that whatever foolish method they had used was not foolproof. No one would listen. No one would appeal the Law. No one. But the Law existed. And magic existed. And the clause that allowed for us to be exhausted outside of each other's presence existed. Every slammed door contributed to a fury that I can't even begin to hope to describe.

The hatred was eating me up, eating up what had before been time for self-contemplation or leisure. It was eating up the spaces between thinking about one thing and then thinking about the next. It woke up with me every morning of that terrible week and went to bed at my side every night. I recognized that I could not possibly function under the weight of all this emotion.

I wrote so often in my journal that there were double and triple entries for each day. It was the only outlet I had, and as far as outlets go, it wasn't very therapeutic. I wrote about the unfairness of the Law, the Ministry's refusal to respond to my request, how he'd thought that he could know me – as if he had the privilege - now, the way I hated Theodore Nott so deeply, so _intensely _that it was beginning to take me over.

I didn't want that.

And so?

I pushed him out. I let my shock intrude, bit by bit, until all I could feel was disbelief.

To think that the Ministry thought that I deserved to be paired with Theodore Nott, second generation Death Eater, was still so incredulous to me that after that first week I functioned as if that was not my reality. I woke up, went to work, did my reports, read through incident reports, created proposals, turned in whatever paperwork was needed as if nothing had changed. My mind was a castle that he couldn't breach. I never thought about him, even though the Marriage Law was on the lips of every other Department in the Ministry.

And so…these meetings took place at the same Muggle café in London proper whenever I could make time. Which wasn't more than a half hour every three days. I was willing to suffer headaches and insomnia if it meant less time spent in his presence. I had to force myself to remain cool and detached before time. Sometimes I gave myself a stern talking-to, sometimes I was a whispered prayer. At all times, I maintained thoughts that strictly had to do with mundane thoughts like what I'd eaten that day, or what I planned to wear the next. Anything to keep my mind busy.

It always worked.

He no longer tried to talk.

Magic wouldn't be denied though. What had started out as persistent headaches had evolved into a cacophony of ills; there were gritty eyes, dry mouth, tremors, a lack of appetite, and an overall feeling of fatigue. From a purely objective standpoint, I knew that the likelihood that this would get progressively worse was rather high. But I was certain I could balance my wellness and work.

I was certain of it.

By the fourth meeting, the hatred I'd fought to leash was leaking back in. I took vindictive pleasure in every new malaise he was suffering. I watched the table two places down from us for the first ten minutes but noticed that he was particularly still today. His hands betrayed a slight tremor as he reached for his teacup and his reflexes appeared fractionally slower. It filled me with such happy malice that for a moment, the rational part of me was shocked. That part was shut down. The happy malice won and I decided to cut our time down to twenty because time in this café was time wasted. I patiently waited for the clock, ignoring the thumping migraine centered behind my right eye. I had been making do without potions but would probably need a cocktail of medicinal stuff to remain on top of my duties on the job.

I hid my watching carefully, making it look as if I was staring at the wall behind him. I was certain that he knew what I was doing, though. He wasn't stupid…evil usually isn't. When he took a sip, he replaced the cup without the slight tremor. I wasn't sure whether he was losing weight but if he was anything like me, he probably was. And that filled me with such wretched glee that I almost smiled.

"I'm cutting it short today," I said perversely, without really thinking.

His eyes lifted from the cup to stare piercingly at me. I hid the urge to flinch behind a sip of my own tea. His gaze didn't waver.

"Why?"

I almost smiled at how hoarse his voice sounded.

"Because I have work to do."

"You enjoy this?"

I held his gaze.

"To what are you referring to?"

He looked away. When he spoke, he sounded so…_resigned_.

"Do you enjoy it? Both of these things? These stilted meetings…and the way our bodies are reacting?" He looked back, eyes so tired. "I would give anything to gain the power to make this work."

My fuse ignited without warning.

_He _would give anything? The frenzy of hatred bubbled up, up, up, over until I felt like my skin was on fire with it, I was expanding with it, I was balloon and the rage was hot air and I was rippling into a different form with it. The son of a Death Eater, the son of the Death Eater who took away the last family I had! And _he _would give anything? What did he know about giving? I knew the moment my facial muscles stopped complying with me – the minute that it revealed the depth of how much I despised the man in front of me – because he froze with an indecipherable look on his face. He couldn't _give _me anything. So much emotion was too much – for a moment, it was like being a child and having my magic react to an overload. The table next to us was neatly sliced down the middle but a cut of wind so sudden that customers jumped out of their seats immediately. I tried to tamp down on the magic in sudden fear – my last wish was to get a warning from the Ministry for using magic (however premeditated this accident was).

I tried for a full ten seconds to control my magic.

When I couldn't conquer it, I stood.

I'd put up with enough for today.

**|… T …|**

She hated me.

I'd been lulled into thinking otherwise, since she'd been so emotionless from the first day. I'd thought that maybe it wasn't so much that she didn't like _me _but that she wouldn't have liked anyone who wasn't strictly a non-Death Eater. The meetings were awful, to be sure, but I'd thought that with time we might be able to move past it. She was busy and unimpressed, and I didn't want to push her or force her or crowd her. For the first time in four meetings, I'd decided to say something. But I couldn't forget the climactic scene at the café yesterday.

Her face had been powerful in motion. The blankness slipped away to reveal pure…unadulterated…fury. I can't describe it. It had looked like her face was rebelling against itself – every muscle moving, every emotion mirrored perfectly, every twitch betrayed. The rage bled into hatred so pure that I leaned back before I was aware I was moving.

She hated me.

She _hated_ me.

She hated _me. _

She hated me so much that she'd lost control of her magic. It had spun away from her, wind, cutting through the table next to us and whistling into a corner as confusion broke out.

When she'd left without a word, I had been frozen. Literally…I couldn't move. I could barely breathe. It felt like the onset of a panic attack, airways constricting and mind struggling to race in a hundred directions. I could feel my hands shaking beneath the table and had to clench them to get them to stop. I'd left after a full fifteen minutes of getting myself together. The waitress asked me if I was alright and I'd had to wave her off.

I'd underestimated Abbott's feelings. I didn't any longer.

Work the next day was hell. We'd gotten sidetracked with Malfoy's affairs – Hermione Granger had been attacked in her own home and Malfoy had been berserk with rage. All of us pulled together in his time of need, after receiving an owl from a St. Mungoes Healer requesting our presence. Managing to keep cool had taken the last of my potion stores, and while I'd been there, I'd stopped by St. Mungos' Potions Department to restock my own supplies and get much _much _more. Because nothing was ever very straightforward with Malfoy (and Granger, consequently) the couple was fighting fiercely by the time everyone left the hospital room.

In light of Abbott's feelings, I couldn't help but envy my mates.

Zabini and Parkinson rubbed along so well that it seemed sometimes like they'd been dating _before_ the Mandate. The two times I'd gone out to lunch with them had been a lesson in how to be a third-wheel. They were a visually striking couple too – the dusk of his skin and the dramatic divide of her paleness and inky black hair. Crabbe and Goyle weren't any different than Zabini. Malfoy, no matter how nuts Granger made him, definitely felt something for her and she for him. His stories of the pheromone mix-up made that shockingly clear. They fought so wildly that their reconciliations were just as passionate – it was obvious to everyone except maybe them that their hearts were involved.

And I say that as a Slytherin who is supposedly allergic to feelings.

It felt like everything was on fast-forward for everyone else and I didn't understand it.

The next day at work was rough. To think that we'd birthed the idea for this place in the middle of War was kind of nuts. Only two months into opening and we were taking off. The two of us had been working hard to publicize and advertise our business, and since we were the first of our kind, we had our hands full trying to schedule everyone in. And all of that stress made everything terrible. It was getting worse – the shakes, the loss of appetite, the headaches. There was no way that we could continue as we had been and expect to come out of it alright. She hated me but the magic was complicating everything – it was actually harder to see her losing weight than it was to notice a decline in my own health. We had to- I mean, we couldn't go on this way. I had to find out what I could.

I stood, pushed back the chair, and got my cloak.

"I'll be back in about an hour," I said to Zabini on my way past his office, "you'll be alright, mate?"

"Moorehouse comes back in an hour," he said easily, "and we should both be here for that."

Even if I wasn't done with my inquiries at the Ministry, I wouldn't miss a client meeting. This marriage mess was important (if I was being honest, it was the most important thing) but I would never jeopardize work for it.

I waved before crossing to the second waiting room in our office, Floo'd into the Ministry's lobby, headed up to the Department of Mysteries. It would be the most likely place to start.

"Is there anyone I can speak to?"

The neat looking witch manning the office desk looked up. She dipped her quill into ink and procured registration parchment.

"What does this pertain to?"

"Marriage Law specifics," I replied. "I would like to ask questions about the male papers."

She scribbled it all down.

"Your name?"

"Theodore Nott."

"Age?"

"Twenty-one."

The look that passed over her face was gone before I could examine it.

"I'll sign you in, Master Nott, and see if there's an Unspeakable on hand to answer your questions."

The parchment that she'd been writing on glowed briefly as I turned away to take a seat in the only chair in the room. Not comfortable, in the least. Five minutes later, I was lead to another small room where a glass clock with numbers made of what looked like tinsel took up the entire left wall. The witch in front of me was professionally warm with an unwavering gaze, and so I jumped right in to it.

"I won't-" I cleared my throat. "I won't ask about the magic, Mrs. Stabler. But the reversibility of it."

She nodded.

"I couldn't tell you about the magic even if I wanted to," she said sympathetically, "but I can tell you that this is not the kind of magic that disperses. The hows and whys of the procedure are complex but the magic that is now binding you to your betrothed is strong and irreversible."

I didn't even know I was holding my breath until she said that. So Abbott and I were locked into this forever. A weight settled on my chest. I nodded my acceptance of this irrevocable fate.

"How do you know that you've picked the right pairs?"

"This War…was divisive. Every ugly thing anyone has ever thought about blood inferiority is out in the open." She looked at me frankly. "This is closure and new beginnings, in one. Your friends, people you get along with – those are non-romantic matches. The long and short of it is that the magic looked for two hearts that matched, regardless of blood or family. So the Ministry ensured that this spell's parameters made romantic love _and _the capacity for happiness the priority. So it's not just that your capable of falling in love with the other person, but that you are capable of falling in love with her and being happy with her too."

"But more than one person can make you happy," I reasoned.

"Depends on what you believe in."

"How does this Law do anything but punish an already suffering populace?" I asked evenly.

"It doesn't-"

"It does," I interrupted before I reached for my cloak and rolled up my sleeve. When she saw the Dark Mark, she drew back. "Because it punishes everyone…not the ones who did the killing and the thieving and the murdering. My betrothed is of the Light."

For a long moment, her eyes remained on the Dark Mark and her professional mien disappeared. When she looked up, her eyes were sad but resolute.

"It doesn't take away from the fact that the process determined that you could make each other happy, happier than anyone else could make either of you." Mrs. Stabler's professional mien returned. "The Ministry didn't do this lightly – as a government, we wanted to help society and especially our young recoup."

I felt dumbfounded for a moment. This was the _best_ way they could come up with?

I couldn't work up any anger underneath the weight of my resignation so I rolled my sleeve down and slipped into my cloak.

"How much time is a pair supposed to be spending in each other's company at the onset?"

"That depends," she said firmly.

"…on?"

"On a whole host of things but mostly…emotion." She turned her hands up but kept her eyes on mines. "Say, we have a pair that was already friends or possibly more before the Law. They have already built a relationship presumably based on positive emotion. They wouldn't need to spend as much time together but they probably already are in the habit of doing so. Then take a couple that had no relationship – they have neither positive nor negative emotion associated with the other person. They would need to spend at least an hour a day to create the bond the magic requires."

The bond? An _hour_? I was completely buggered then. An hour?

"And what exactly does the bond require?" I asked steadily. "With the bond made, does the need to be around each other lessen?"

"It's a tad more complicated than that. The magic, in essence, is supposed to help a pair become closer. So it wants a pair to form a bond. Magic can force false emotion but…that's not the point of this. Instead, the magic enforces a necessity for…for physical proximity," she said with feeling. "It doesn't make you want to be around the other person. It just provides the incentive. If you're around each other for long periods of time, logically, it should follow that you form a relationship. The magic provides the physical aspect of the bond but the nature of the relationship provides the mental aspect of the bond. But with the bond made, yes, it's not crippling to go weeks without seeing your significant other."

So the magic, in essence, banked on two people liking each other by being forced into being in each other's company.

How in the bloody hell did she define 'incentive'? This was not an incentive, this was a _penalty_. Had she even heard herself use the word 'crippling'? If that wasn't damning, I don't know what was. Perhaps my face betrayed me. She tried to backpedal.

"It's a Law that has bound two people who might possibly have cause for dissent." Damn right, it did. "It's insurance that people _try_ to get to know each other from the start."

"What about a couple who doesn't get along from the start – how much time do they need to spend together?"

"The magic reacts to that. The point is to get the couple together and any negative emotion rather-" she struggled to find a word, "-amplifies the _fatigue_ act."

Fuck.

_Fuck._

Fuck.

So, what that actually meant, was that the bond was attuned to the depth of Abbott's loathing and was only going to become _more_ constrictive? So where a normal couple who didn't feel anything needed at least an hour every single day, we needed _more_ than that? And we barely made thirty minutes every seventy-two hours?

"And if the required amount of time is not being spent together," I said a little breathlessly, "then-"

"-then nothing good. Magic can't be reversed, and it can't be gotten around. It's like the way a competent witch or wizard utters a spell and the spell happens. Or a baby born with magic directs things with emotion or- or intention. The Ministry's not sure yet but it probably will lead to rapidly worsening health. Possibly the need for hospitalization. I can't say it enough - they need to be together or they will be unable to function."

Because I needed all my fears confirmed.

"But for the bond to form, the magic requires us to physically be around each other? That's it?"

She nodded.

"Just out of curiosity, does the Marriage Law actually require marriage?"

She shook her head.

"The Ministry understands that the wording on the initial letter and the second set of papers appears to say that it is. We are working to rectify that immediately."

The derision was clear on my face – I just knew it. I struggled to fight it back and made my face as blank as possible.

"Thank you for all your help today, madam."

I stood up and bowed before leaving. When I got to the door, her voice stopped me.

"It might be useless words to you, Master Nott, but it will work out for good…it _has_ to."

I didn't bother turning around before I went on my way.


	2. Chapter 2

_Was it loneliness that brought you here, broken and weak?  
__Was it tiredness that made you sleep…have you lost your will to speak?__  
_

**|… T …|**

"This isn't working." I sat down and looked across the table at the increasingly gaunter blonde across the café from me. Time with my family and mates meant exhausting my potion cabinet (Malfoy's try-outs on July 4th had taken the last of my stock).The tremors had escalated to full-bodied shivers that took two potions to combat before I'd left the house. Unfortunately, blood-shot eyes weren't easily fixed. She was red-eyed too. She looked strangely lovely, even with lessened vigor. "You know it isn't."

She looked as emotionless as usual.

"We're driving ourselves to illness."

"I can't help the hours that I keep," she shrugged and looked at her nails. "I-"

"Hannah." I didn't mean it to come out so softly but it did, and her she went from blank to animated. Shock, suspicion, and a repulsion warred on her face. I felt the whip of it, felt horrible by her obvious rejection of me saying her name, but opened my mouth resolutely. "Whatever you feel for me…I don't blame you. This is a terrible situation all-around and-"

-_I'm so sorry that they made this mistake-_

"-and I would make it easier for you if I could. You mightn't believe me but it's harder to watch you suffer, thanks to the magic and all these protective instincts that are so new to me.

Her brown eyes were wider than wide. And how terrible was it that even though she so obviously despised me, this magic couldn't be denied, my now-enhanced natural instinct couldn't be denied? Even with her feelings on her face, I couldn't fight the depth of my concern for her…nor did I want to.

"If you want me to suffer," I whispered as I met her gaze, "that's fine. But you can't do this to yourself too."

Her face melted into shock.

"We have to be able to function," I said. "You can't be an Auror who is slower on her feet than everyone else. If you're suffering a fraction of what I am, then you're shaking and dizzied sometimes, and the pain in your head is unbearable. How can you do your job if you're sick?"

"Don't you dare imply that I can't do my job," she hissed in my face. "I am good at what I do. Good, damn it."

"I'm not saying you aren't," I said firmly. I needed her to agree. "But even the most amazing witch wouldn't be able to fight her deteriorating condition. No matter how you feel about this or about _me_, you should be healthy."

"I am coping-"

"No," I said calmly, "you aren't. When we first met, your cheeks were fuller and had color. Your hair wasn't limp and your cloak didn't hang from your shoulders. You could hold that teacup the entire thirty minutes, now it looks like stirring the liquid is all that you can manage."

I watched as she struggled to fold her face back into an unemotional mask. It took a long, tense minute.

"What are you saying?"

"We need to move in together."

I hadn't really thought about how I planned to convince her. The thing of it was that I'd been doing so much thinking. If we were locked into this situation until death, then something had to break. And if the bond didn't require emotional closeness but physical closeness, then all we had to do was be close, correct? We just had to be around each other. We didn't even talk at these meager meetings that didn't do anything for our bond. So if we didn't talk now and she had no intention of opening up to me any time soon, then that was it right? Wasn't this the most perfect solution?

It didn't have to be my place or her place. We could get a new place wherever she wanted with the stipulation that we lived together would force us to be around each other _at least_ an hour each day. And that was the bare minimum, really.

It sounded insane, I knew that.

But what could I do?

"No."

"Listen to me," I said urgently, "we don't need to be together. We don't have to speak or sit down and talk to each other. I have said it before and I will say it again…I don't blame you. I don't expect anything from you. I…I just…Merlin, the magic wants us to be bonded but its only limited to physical proximity. If we can't get ourselves enough time now, how worse will it get down the line when you get more cases? When you have to be on the field? Did you know we are required to spend more than an hour a day every _single _day?"

She wouldn't stop shaking her head.

"No-"

"It'll get worse," I finally gave in and took her wrist. It was terrifying, knowing that I was touching someone who truly despised me, because even knowing that didn't stop all of my heart from wishing she didn't. She hissed when I held her but I held that wrist up.

Both of us watched a muscle spasm run through it.

"Whatever potions you're taking to try and fight this thing isn't going to help in a few days," I continued, pained. "It will get worse. I don't want you to do anything that you don't want to do – I just want you to be…well."

When she met my eyes again, there was such a troubling mixture of emotions there that I dropped her wrist and looked away. And even then, I wanted to hold her so badly it was distracting. When I looked back, something in the downturn of her mouth said she was defeated.

"It doesn't have to be my place or yours," I said quickly. "Whatever you want, wherever you want, cost is not an issue. I understand it, I do, that this would be such a big sacrifice for you but it has to be done so you can get better. We don't have to see each other, ever. We don't have to do anything that you don't want to do, honestly, but you need to get better."

I put her hand down on the table as gently as possible. She looked away for a brief moment and then looked back. Her gaze was unflinching (I'd give her that, she was brave, no doubt) and hard.

"When?"

I hoped that relief didn't pour across my face.

_Thank heavens._

"Sooner than later," was all I said.

"…where?"

"Wherever you want. It's the very least that I can do."

Her face folded in on itself before she stood.

"I'll owl you tonight with my house choice to tour tomorrow."

I nodded and watched her leave.

**|… H …|**

I wasn't an emotional person anymore. Really, sometimes I felt like I'd dried up the night I'd found out that Alfie had died. The maws of grief had swallowed me whole and most days I still feel like I'm in the belly of the beast. Except the beast didn't really work with tears so I had no more. But if there was ever a day that I came close to crying, it was today.

I hit my bed face first, and scrunched it up against every emotion threatening to crawl out.

He was right.

I was driving us to death.

And it was purely selfish, to serve my own hatred. The female papers had long since arrived and I was fully aware of all the bullshit technical terms the Ministry was slapping on this farce. I couldn't deny that I felt spiteful whenever I thought about how he must suffering, how his head felt like it was splitting open at the seams. The way his eyes creased at a particular loud noise in the café or how he kept himself as still as possible…all of it brought me a terrible kind of pleasure. I couldn't pretend otherwise and I didn't want to. But I couldn't ignore the fact that this was getting to me too. There was no way I was going to be suitable out in the field if I got a hands-on Dark Artifact case.

If I could have wept at the hopelessness of the situation, I would have.

Blast it all. He really was right.

I couldn't risk my job. I couldn't risk my position – being an Auror was everything to me. It was the justice that I could get for others; the conviction that I was doing the _right_ thing, the _good_ thing, even if he wasn't here to see me. No matter how much I hated Theodore Nott's father, I would never betray what Alfie meant to me by losing this job.

Never.

I wrote furiously, frustration brimming and spilling in inky words on the page. How in God's name was I going to even begin to find a place? I couldn't help that I wanted him to suffer, that I wanted to inflict that suffering myself. But I could barely stand to stare at him now, so what would I do now? Swallow that hatred? Pretend that I liked him?

…

…

Pretend…

…that I liked him?

I rolled over and stared at the ceiling.

I dismissed the idea immediately. What I needed was a Muggle house listing. If I wanted to be petty, it would be an apartment. But in cramped corners, it would be so much harder to make sure we didn't run into each other at all. And that was the point. And since I didn't care how much of a drain this was on his pocket, I was going to look for the biggest Muggle house I could find within driving distance of London proper.

There was no time like the present to start my search.

Blast it all.

**|… | …|**

The Muggle realtor led the way in, going on and on about the number of rooms and the optimal location and the quiet neighborhood, while I watched Theodore Nott's face closely. The early afternoon light was dim – another summer rain was coming soon – but the realtor didn't seem to feel the need to illuminate the room further. She said something else about children and I continued to watch him. If he felt either positively or negatively about 'our' new home, he didn't show it.

I wanted him unbalanced and uncomfortable. I wanted him miserable and unhappy. I wanted it to start now.

And by God, I meant to get my wish.

When the realtor looked back at me, I scraped together a very faint smile. She must have taken it as encouragement since she smiled back. Her gaze then turned to him.

"How recently were you married?"

I watched him freeze.

I'd spun some lie about being newlyweds in need of a large new home to get her to show us listings so quickly. I hadn't been very particular about a description but I _had_ stipulated that we would need at least three floors to the place. She'd worked herself up into a titter over imagined wedding bliss before I'd been through with her.

He was literally a deer in the headlights – no smile, all shock, all wide eyes. The vicious glee spreading through me was my reward. I watched him squirm for a full minute before I stepped in.

"The house is his wedding present to me," I said with a wider smile. I deserved an Actor's Guild Award for this. "It's only been a month."

"He waited a whole month to get you a new home?" she asked happily. "I'm teasing you, Mr. Nott – no need to look so uncomfortable. This is such an amazing home in a wonderful part of the city. My, what a brilliant husband you are!"

He couldn't quite get himself to unfreeze and I turned to the realtor with what I hoped was a fawning look on my face. I wanted every word out of my mouth to slice him thin.

"I really couldn't have asked for better." I turned the fawning look on him and whispered the rest. "He's a good man."

He blanched, immediately, blood leaving his face in a rush that was visible to my eyes.

Bull's-eye.

"You're a lucky one, dear," said the realtor as I turned back to her. She took my arm in a friendly manner and led me through the very spacious kitchen to the second dining room.

The constant thrum of hatred was no longer background noise – it surged with a life of its own as I thought about how quickly he'd paled. I smiled. Perhaps moving in wouldn't be so bad. It would give me ample opportunity to find his weaknesses…and exploit them.

She babbled something at my side and I nodded like I was listening, but then she turned to look behind us.

"Where's your husband?"

I turned.

The kitchen was empty.

"He probably went back to the larger home office," I said airily. "After all, he'll be spending a lot of time in there working on his accounts."

"He's in finance?"

"Law, actually."

The realtor looked delighted.

"You both look so young to be married, much less working."

_And isn't that the truth?_

"We look younger than we are?'

She nodded and touched my arm conspiratorially. "I wouldn't put you past twenty one, myself. And if I had to hazard a guess, the mister can't be older than twenty-three at most."

Well, I couldn't say she wasn't astute. But it would never do for her to know what we were really about. I guided her back through the kitchen and into the foyer

"Young love, or so they say. And young love needs a house as soon as possible so we're going to take this one." She must not have been entirely sure that I liked the place since she looked even happier than before. "How soon can we sign it into ownership?"

No, not happy. She looked _delirious_ with joy.

"If you both would follow me back to the office, we can process the down-payment-"

"Can we pay it in full today?" We both turned to see him looking completely recovered, if a little cautious. "I want to make sure no one buys it out from under me."

I glanced at our realtor…alright, she was possibly on the verge of passing out.

"Yes, yes, yes, of course, sir," she broke away from me and hurried to his side. "You can. It is a lovely house and will be such a good fit for the two of you. If you would just follow me in the car, we can be on our way."

I ended up with the house in my name, 'present' from one Theodore Nott. The deed was tucked away in one of the moving boxes that I had lining the entry way of what was soon to be my ex-home. It had taken me a few hours to pack, after meeting the realtor for lunch and then heading back to work to finish up a report. I'd lived in Muggle places ever since the end of the War, hopping from apartment to apartment in those first four months because I couldn't seem to stay calm. Or maybe it was that I now felt…rootless, like it didn't really matter where I stayed because I probably wasn't going to stay. I didn't really have a reason to.

Was it going to kill me to move? No.

Was this new move permanent? Heaven only knew.

Was I going to miss this new place? I don't know. This last apartment had been more of a home than any of the others, probably because Cho helped me pick it out and move in. So, I guess the appropriate answer was maybe.

The house itself was beautiful and modern, rooms in soft greys and eggshell colors. Four floors, large kitchen and large main dining room, five bedrooms, and one home office. At the leasing office, he had been very quiet but polite when spoken to. I'd been secretly ecstatic that my words had struck him so deeply, which distracted me from throwing any more barbs. I'd taken the day off which meant inquisitive stares from McDowell and Pottleby.

Two keys – one for him, one for me – and an agreement that we would move into the place today around 4pm.

There was really no time like the present.

"That's the last of it, Han," said Cho, poking her head into the entryway to look at me. "Do you want to start taking stuff over then come back to clean?"

I glanced out the window before I turned back to her.

"Yes," I said. "The two taxi cabs are pulling up to the sidewalk right now."

Everything fit in the two vans, and it only took twenty minutes despite the light drizzle to load them both. She got into one and I got into the other to settle in for the thirty minute drive.

The landscape, the gridlock, the raindrops on the rolled up window – everything rather blurred together into a single image for my eyes. I wasn't thinking about anything in particular. My whole life was in this van and the one behind it. How interesting was it that my whole life could be summarily fit into a vehicle? Into any vehicle? How interesting was it that everything that made me, or everything that I called mine, could be packed up and moved in less than a day? Maybe there was some morbid lesson there that I could be learning, about how transitory life was. But didn't I already know that? I already knew that. I'd already learned that on the day I'd been pulled out of class and called to Professor Dumbledore's office to learn that my mother was dead. And if I hadn't learned it then, I'd definitely learned it in the War proceeding.

My mum had been wonderful. She was easily irritated when tired, and funny, and a decent cook, and a really good hug-giver. As her youngest, I'd gotten a lot more babying than Alfie had, and I'd reveled in it. She used to call me her 'handbag', I'd never been far from her skirts when I was little. It helped that we looked exactly like too – everything except the blonde hair which I got from a father that died before I was old enough to retain memories. Interestingly enough, big brother's genes were more evenly divided. He had Mum's eyes and chin, our father's nose and ears. His hair was darker than either of them, though, and had a curl that defied gravity sometimes. I remember when I was little and he was in a good mood, he'd put me up on his shoulders and I'd play with his hair, _fascinated _by how it waved at the ends-

I closed my eyes.

A nap, that's what I needed. A nap.

**|… | …|**

When we pulled up, I was jerked awake before I'd even known I'd fallen asleep. The house was even nicer looking against the backdrop of soft grey skies and a little rain. I'd been careful to spell the boxes before we'd packed everything so if the taxi cab driver noticed how dry the boxes looked, he kept it to himself. I went ahead first to unlock the door and push it open. That's when I heard soft music playing.

"Hello?" I stepped gingerly through the doorway. "Anyone here?"

Well, obviously someone was here and that someone was probably the man who'd purchased this place. I looked back to see the taxi driver opening the trunk to begin putting things on the sidewalk. Cho was coming up the walk with her purse at her side. I waited.

"He's here, isn't he." I shrugged. She handed me her purse. "I'll be out here with the boxes."

I padded down the hallways, wondering what exactly she thought I was going to say to him when I saw him. It wasn't like we were in the habit of deep conversations, much less greetings. The music led me out of the entryway and up the stairs. I hesitated on the landing before swallowing whatever emotions were burning in my throat. The staircase was in the middle – a single hallway on either side leading to different rooms. The music was coming from the right so I turned without thinking. I was quiet, I think, but it was habit thanks to Auror training. If I remembered correctly, the first room should have been a living room.

And then I poked my head in and-

-he was fast asleep on an armchair near the fireplace. It was almost picturesque really, the dark colors of the carpet and the dark wall and the flickering of firelight across everything. He still had a black woolen coat on, unbuttoned, and wore black beneath. His dress shirt was cracked at the collarbone, like he'd been hot before he'd fallen asleep. His head was angled upwards and his neck bare and stretched at what looked to me like a rather uncomfortable angle. I was surprised to find that he looked exhausted even while sleeping (that wasn't a pang of guilt fighting its way up my throat); he had the same smudges under his eyes that I did, more like a firm black fingerprint than a vague dark smudge. He looked so childlike, so harmless like this. All his dark hair was in slight disarray, a particularly stubborn patch curling over his forehead. I'd never noticed how thick his hair was. Even losing weight and paling, his hair looked thick and healthy. Five o'clock shadow on his chin and along the sides of his strong jaw, and my hands reaching out to-

- I snatched my hand back in absolute horror.

Oh, God.

When had I stepped into the room and _crossed _the carpet?

I backpedaled in panic.

When had I crossed the carpet to _stand_ in front of him?

My back hit the wall with a very soft thump before I turned blindly and jogged down the hallway.

Damn this magic and damn this bond.

I sucked in air at the landing.

Damn it.

**|… T …|**

For all intents and purposes, I was moved into the new house that Abbott had picked. I'd left half of my bedroom at home but I was making a good faith attempt to stay in this place. I tried not to think about how hard the next few years (the remaining years) of my life would be, as I tried to stay out of her way and tried to figure out how to mend a rift that was as wide as a continent. I tried not to think of her hatred, or the fact that Zabini had been unable to find out conclusively how her mother had died, or the deadness in her eyes during most of our meetings. What was important, I kept thinking resolutely, was that we were moving in so that we could both be well. We could both function. And moving in meant I wouldn't have to subject her to meetings where she wanted to escape. The blessing of physical proximity should work to keep her healthy without forcing us to form an emotional bond.

Somewhere in my mind I knew that I was trying to cheat the magic and the Law.

The rest of my mind really couldn't care.

It was enough that I was already feeling protective of her. I couldn't keep fighting myself and _her_. So moving in together would leave me free to try and work out just what the hell I was supposed to do next.

When I woke up, she was already in the house. Even if the emotional bond wasn't formed, the instincts were flaring to life. I could feel her as if she was in the room, even though I couldn't hear anything over the roar and crackle of the fire.

_Should I go to her, _I wondered, _should I say something first?_

I should.

I remembered her saccharine sweet words to the realtor yesterday. I suspected that she'd known what she was doing, and had twisted the knife on purpose. I didn't blame her. She was a pretty good actress, pulling enough warmth into her voice to fool the Muggle woman into thinking that we were a happy couple only intent on finding a house to call home. She'd even called me a 'good man' with a facial expression that had looked like she'd meant it. It had been a punch in the gut because she had _never_ exhibited any sort of emotion around me, and certainly nothing warm and inviting.

_Should I?_

I should.

I had to keep trying.

I left the room to check downstairs first. I found her in the kitchen, poring over some parchment. When I cleared my throat, she looked up with a startled air. Merlin, this was the second time she was showing her feelings on her face. As I watched, her surprise settled down into a forced blankness of expression.

"I trust you've settled in?" I asked politely, moving to the island counter. "Which bedroom did you choose?"

"I did," she said coolly, "and I took the one at the end of the left hallway on the fourth floor."

The unspoken 'as far as I could get from you' still hung in the air like it had been uttered. I ignored the flash of pain in my chest and nodded.

"Have you eaten yet?" I asked. "I hope pasta is alright."

Her jaw didn't drop but it was fairly close.

"You _cook_?" she asked, then immediately looked mortified that she'd asked the question.

"I do," I said quietly. "It was more of a necessity than anything else. The Muggle way too. I know, it's quite unusual but…well, I do."

She looked at me like I wasn't who she'd thought I was.

"I hope pasta is alright," I repeated.

"You don't ha-"

"I know," I interrupted, "and I want to. Cooking for two is better than cooking for one."

Clearly, everything out of my mouth was as much of a shock to her as Muggle electricity to her system. I turned towards the pantry mechanically and starting getting out the basic ingredients. I didn't look at her again until everything was on the stove top and cooking. She was still staring at me like I was a brand new person. I didn't say anything and I didn't quite avoid her eyes but I left the room while the sauce simmered next to the cooking noodles.

I returned with a book to read, dished out dinner, and tried not to watch her eat in relative silence.

"Do you-"she cleared her throat, "do you cook often?"

She was asking me about myself?

"Not really," I said thoughtfully. "It offends my house-elves if I get into the kitchen on a regular basis."

What looked like the granddaughter of a smile slipped unto her face. Merlin, I'd never been graced with even a positive look before and that poor excuse for a smile almost had me sitting down in shock. I don't think anything was revealed on my face but her face morphed back into blankness. I scrabbled to keep the conversation going.

"A report for the job?" I indicated the parchment with my chin.

She looked like she was debating whether to respond or not. I held my breath and waited.

"It is."

"Do you usually bring work home from your office?"

I watched her face shutter and knew that somehow, I had said the wrong thing. She rolled both scrolls up and put her plate in the sink.

"Just leave your plate in the sink and I'll wash everything."

"You don't have-"

"And thank you for dinner," she said politely over her shoulder. "I think I'll just wash up now."

What had I said?

**|… | …|**

Work was easier the next day. I owled Crabbe in the morning when my owl returned with a letter from Goyle. I told them to get Plunko's notes but they were being lazy about it. It would be much quicker than this messing around with Owls. Obviously, I was on to something with the moving in together idea. I didn't feel like I had before the Marriage Law's _fatigue _act but I felt much better than a walking corpse. When I came in, Zabini was already hard at work over the Moorehouse account.

"How long have you been here?" I asked curiously. "You 're making me feel like a sloth."

He laughed and made room for me at the joint work table.

"Your brother sent you a letter to the office. It's on your desk."

"Honestly, mate, how long have you been here?"

"Since around seven," he finally responded. "And I…well, you're entitled to the last week."

"I've been dead on my feet," I said wryly, "you can say it. But…"

"But?"

"Bought a house."

Zabini quirked an eyebrow.

"For…?"

"For her." Now both his eyebrows were up. He looked quite confused. "We moved in together."

"…you what?"

"The fatigue act was killing her, I could see it," I said slowly. "And-"

"It was killing _you_," Zabini said firmly. "And while this will sound rude, I would be worried about your own arse and not hers."

"The protective instincts-"

Now, he looked shocked.

"You already feel it? But you don't even like each other."

And that was a damned lie. I couldn't have hated her if I tried. It was that she hated me and there wasn't much I could do about that. My feelings or non-feelings didn't really enter the equation either way. I shrugged and he let it go.

"I'll be back to myself in no time," I switched subjects, "and I'll get a head-start on hiring an assistant."

I ignored his piercing stare and pulled the Moorehouse accounts towards me.

"Now where were you on this?"

**|… | …|**

The next two weeks, Abbott and I fell into a pattern. The first day, I left a note on her bedroom door with my office's address and ways to reach me if something happened. Her hours were much more erratic than mine. While I usually headed into my office around ten in the morning and got back a little after six in the evening each night, I had little idea as to where she would be at any given time. Mondays and Wednesdays seemed to be her long days – she was out of the house by eight and could be home at any time between eight and eleven. Tuesdays and Thursdays she might still be in the bath when I left and there was no real pattern to her return.

I cooked.

It was literally a toss-up as to whether I'd find that food on the table the same way I left it. Tuesdays and Thursdays I left breakfast for her and Mondays and Wednesdays I left dinner on the kitchen counter. Usually, there was a note beside it that usually wished her a good day or something equally as pleasant.

I never expected a response and I never got one. I was just grateful for the times when she did eat.

Fridays, I had no idea what she did. I just knew that the house was empty when I went to bed.

My health got better steadily. The color came back into my cheeks (Goyle joked I'd been looking as pale as Malfoy for a bit, there) and the headaches were gone by the end of the first week. I could sleep through the night now, and the tremors dissipated towards the end of the second week.

Since it was a Muggle house, I couldn't really use magic the way I usually would. I made sure to change enough for 500 pounds of money, knowing I'd be taking Muggle cabs every day to get to somewhere I could Apparate to Diagon Alley.

The first Saturday after we moved in, I went in to the office. The War had ended about six months ago and while everyone had been busy picking up the pieces, we were busy studying. On our own, Zabini and I had begun to study what we could about the intersection of law and finance. We'd long since come to the understanding that there was no difference in wizard or witch in blood, so we looked to Muggle universities for courses that expanded upon Arithmacy and Mathematics. Zabini had always been good with numbers – all his logic put to good use with finance, while I looked to law. Wizard Law wasn't that complicated – repealed Umbridge mandates aside – and the Ministry was looking to find a way to write a governing constitution that would give fairness and peace to its people.

We were still learning but the learning curve was rather steep.

All of the second Saturday was spent in the office, a full twelve hours of work. The Moorehouse case was actually a bit complicated. William Moorehouse nèe Appleby was a forty-seven year old wizard who had lost his wife three years ago. His property, according to wizarding law and a very complicated will, was to be passed on to his beloved daughter upon his death. He was trying to get his affairs in order but his accounts were a convoluted mess. Zabini was trying to make sense of the discrepancies he was finding. I was just trying to figure out how the hell his family's will worked, and if there were any loopholes that would allow the property to pass into his sister's hands without problems.

By the time, we left the office we were both slightly frustrated and more than a little tired. And the storm, which I'd thought would be a mild one, was not helping.

The house was dark when the Muggle taxi cab pulled up to the house. I stood in the entryway for a moment. I couldn't help the slight melancholy that bubbled up when I pushed the front door open to silence. Whatever, I pushed it away and closed the door. Not being able to use magic meant I'd have to manually dry off. I trudged up the stairs to my bedroom to get a towel and made a mental note to leave a stack in the kitchen. When I was suitably dry, I trudged back down to figure out what to do about dinner.

When I made it back to the kitchen, I couldn't work up any enthusiasm over eating. I wondered where Abbott was then wandered out to the first living room. I meant to sit down for only a little bit after getting a fire started but was out like a light. When I woke up to weak sunlight Sunday morning, there was a blanket tucked around me.

I didn't know what to think about that.

Week three swam along much like week two. We were making headway on Moorehouse's case, and had taken up two more cases, and interviewed three people for the secretarial position. I didn't see hair nor hide of her from Monday until Friday, but she was obviously around since I felt normal and healthy. My mind kept straying to where she could be, wondering if she was alright and taking care of herself…wondered if we'd ever get to a place where I didn't feel like I was committing a crime by writing a note that wished her a good day. She was never very far from my thoughts. The need to see her was so _terribly _intense. Saturday rolled around again and I was at the office for another long haul. It was almost odd how much this mirrored last weekend.

"What's on your mind?"

"Moorehouse and his family's ridiculous complicated will," I said drily, "and the fact that we really do need an assistant at some point."

"That we do, mate."

I glanced outside, at the incessant rain and the wild wind.

"We should probably get going," I sighed. "You've got lock up?"

Zabini nodded, clapped me on the back.

"See you Monday morning."

Another night where I returned semi-drenched to a house with no one else in it. The cab drive through the rain was slow and cautious, like the cab driver was unusually wary of the storm.

"Wilder than usual, innit?"

I nodded and opened the passenger door. He tipped his hat.

"You have a good night, sir."

"You too."

I nodded with what I hoped was a smile and closed the door behind me. I was soaked before I got to the door and fumbling for keys with stiff hands.

"Oh!" I was shocked into dropping the keys when I turned to see Abbott standing behind me, looking just as drenched. Her hair was darkened with the rain, and down around her shoulders instead of its usual austere bun. The sight of her was so welcome that I couldn't do anything more than gape. "Let me get that."

She got to the keys before I did and moved past me to unlock the door. I stared at her back before I remembered myself.

"I'm sorry-"

She pushed the door open with her shoulder and motioned me past her. I went like a puppy being led on a leash. She closed the door behind me, and it was the first time she'd been less than a foot away from me and I was acutely aware of it.

"You are drenched," she said with an odd look on her face.

"So are you," I said.

"I moved the towels to right beside the door," she said with a nod behind me. I was distracted by how dark her hair was up close, and the way her lashes looked like they were clumping together. She said something else and stepped back.

"I'm sorry?"

"I said that…well, you should dry off." I blinked and she looked at me oddly, again. "The towels are behind you. I'm going to the bath."

I turned blindly and listened to her footsteps move away.

Where the _hell_ was all this attraction coming from?

**|… H …|**

For a minute there, Nott had looked completely surprised to see me on the stoop. It was understandable since we never saw each other but I'd been a tad bit miffed by his surprise. Did he think I was never here? Or that I was not honoring the verbal agreement? Who did he think ate all the food he set aside for breakfast and dinner? When he'd dropped his keys, I'd been propelled into movement. He seemed even more shocked when I'd opened the door. I hadn't had the time to figure out what was happening with him before I headed upstairs for a warm bath.

Hatred was exhausting.

Don't ever listen to any one's lies about revenge. It might be satisfying but it was _tiring_ to feel so much for someone perpetually. What had initially been a huge net of negative feelings slowly constricted and folded into a more-manageable-but-not-really chunk of…stuff. At work, I went back to purposefully putting the situation out of my head. At home, that approach didn't work too well. He was damnably easy to disconcert, that much was obvious, because he was so unfailingly careful of me. Sometimes, I'd reason that it was a waste of food if I didn't eat it. At others, spite would swell and I'd ignore the kitchen altogether. I made sure to always catch dinner before work or with Cho, before I got home.

Tonight was the first time in days that I'd seen him face-to-face. A kernel of politeness demanded that I do as he bid and show up to dinner after the bath.

It had been awkward and restrained and polite and I'd almost forgotten that he was the son of a murderer before he'd called this place 'home' and I'd gotten away. He was so determined, so transparently gentle with me that it was much easier to just stay out of his way and ignore the kindness from afar than it was to deal with it head-to-head. I hadn't _asked _for this, any of it. And it made me uncomfortable and angry when he was polite…it made me feel like _I _was the bad person, like the heaviness of my emotions were of my own creation. It made me a feel a little foolish for my initial shock that he'd known what electricity was, known how to turn use the electric stove, and also known how to hail a cab. I'd expected living here to be an impossible challenge for him but he was taking everything so much in stride that I would have accused him of being Muggleborn if I didn't know who he was. It made me briefly consider writing thank-you notes for the meals he cooked. It made me tuck a blanket around him when I found him exhausted and passed out on the couch. And all of that made me even angrier. This dinner just underlined everything that had happened in the first one. This was almost the same, except I kept glancing across the island counter at him. For God's sake, it wasn't as if I didn't know what he looked like, it just…

…well, I don't know _why_ I kept looking at him.

I _hated_ that I kept looking at him.

I had every intention of leaving as soon as I'd washed the dishes.

"How was your week?" he asked, just as I turned the tap on to wash my plate.

"Busy," I said shortly. I gripped the plate in my hands hard, and scrubbed at imagined stains before shoving it under the rush of water.

"A lot of cases?" he prodded.

God, he just wouldn't give up. His determination to be everything polite was aggravating and insidious and damn it, I just wanted to get out of this kitchen without slipping into conversation with him.

"Or a lot of paperwork?"

"Both."

I dried the plate and cup with a clean rag. I placed them in the dish rack. When I turned, he was close – closer than he'd ever been – and I froze more on instinct than anything else. It was like every single point of our bodies was touching, _reacting_, without my express permission. His eyes – Jesus, had they always been that _blue? _– were unusually bright and he was staring at me. And I knew I was staring back. And I was on fire.

He dropped the plate inside the sink and the moment broke.

When he stepped back, he wished me a good night. I couldn't even do anything but nod and watch as he left, clutching the counter behind me for sanity.

Curse this bond.

**|… I …|**

I bumped into Granger at the grocer's last week. Lunch at Charmed was a warm but somewhat awkward affair. The giant in the room was, of course, the Law that had turned everyone's life over in the space of a day. I told her about my studio outside of Wiltshire, and how her name merited an entry in the gab mags. She looked so surprised that I was amused. When she told me that the world was on the mend and asked after Theodore Nott, Nott Senior's face flashed across my mind and I struggled to cloak my emotion in a smile. We parted with a promise to keep in touch.

I went to visit Mum and Alfie twice a week, usually Fridays and Sundays. I hadn't been able to bear the house without the two of them in it, but I would never let it go. When I came, I cleaned the house from top to bottom before I walked the little ways to get to the small family cemetery. Anyway, it was like I liked to end and start the week with them. I always bought flowers on my way there. Every single time, I thought it would be lovely if I could grow the flowers that I brought to the graves myself. Fridays were a short visit during lunch, usually, but Sundays were a longer affair. Cho came with me once, and asked me if I was aware that I rotated the types of flowers I brought. I hadn't been aware that I did that automatically. Cho had smiled at me and patted my hand, then slipped the address of a very cheap but very nice florist that I used to this day.

She also asked me if I talked to them.

I'd told her that sometimes I did, sometimes I didn't. She understood.

I kneeled between the two headstones and carefully arranged my two bouquets on each.

The grass was thriving with all this summer rain, and wet. I didn't mind getting my cloak wet though. It didn't really matter in the long scheme of things.

"I-" I cleared my throat, feeling unaccountable guilty, "I should probably tell you both what I haven't told you yet…it's Theodore Nott."

My throat closed up and I fought to suck in some air.

"That's who my betrothed is."

It was all I got out before I tilted myself backwards. It was a good enough effort of talking today.

When I returned to the house around three, music was twinkling out of the room he'd remodeled into an office. I practically flew up the stairs to avoid any potential conversation and sighed in relief when I made it to my bedroom unscathed. I spent the afternoon there, writing in my journal before reading over yet another report for grammar and discrepancies, and moved to the bed when my work desk became too uncomfortable.

I sat up straight. Then I was slumped into the pillows. And then I was on my stomach, reading the report with my chin cradled in my fists.

Then I was asleep.

I'm running on little feet, little legs, lots of energy. I know this place is my house so I take the steps as quickly as I can and bang on the door. Mum and Alfie are already supposed to be outside – what could they be doing? If we're going to the park, then we should go _now _because _now_ is when all the children come to play. I want to play!

"Mummy, Alfie, hurry up!"

I hear a noise on the other side of the door but I don't back up quickly enough. The door swings inward and I'm a pile on the floor. When I look up, Alfie is laughing really hard. He stops when I scrunch up my face in the beginning of a loud scream, and drops to his knees.

"Up you go, Hannah Banana!" He pulls me to my feet and then pulls me into his arms and then laughs.

"What happened?"

Mum is behind us with a look on her face like she knows exactly what happened. Mum knows everything though. She really does. Once I'd stolen an egg from the icebox because I thought if I kept it warm enough I could make it hatch. She'd known where the egg was when she came into my room, without even looking! See, Mum, knew everything.

"Nothing happened, right Hannah?"

I nod a lot so Mummy doesn't slow down. If she slows down, we'll never make it to the park!

"Park, park, park," I keep saying, so they don't forget. "Park, come on, park!"

"We're going, we're going," Mum says with a smile that makes me feel warm.

Alfie puts me down and I go back down the walk. They should be right behind me, I don't know why they always move so slow when I wanna go to the park! I push the gate open and zoom through it. When I turn around, my home is gone. Why is my home gone?

I stand there confused. My house was just here!

"Alfie!" I call out. "Mum!"

If the house is gone…then are they gone too?

"Alfie? Mum?" Now I'm scared because I don't care if the house is gone but I want my mum and my brother. "Alfie! Mum!"

When I try to push the gate, it's locked and it won't let me in. I am frightened, like really frightened, like more frightened than that one time when I couldn't wake up Alfie so I ran to get Mummy. When I push at the gate, it pushes back.

"Alfie!" I scream. "Mum?! Alfie?! Mum! Where are you? Mum! Mum-"

I came awake screaming and disoriented. The light was off and the storm was going and Theodore Nott was at my side, looking deeply concerned and a little bit frightened.

"Are you alright?" He doesn't wait for an answer but pushes a glass of water into my shaking hands. "Drink it, it's just water, drink."

I was still so disoriented that I obeyed blindly. All the walls that were usually up between us had been decimated by the nightmare and his worry. That's the only explanation I have for why I didn't recoil when he sat down and started to rub my back.

"Drink it all, Hannah," he said while one of his hands rubbed comfortingly across my back. "Just breathe, and drink, you're okay. You're alright."

Wasn't I breathing? Jesus, was that rapid breathing _me_? The minute I became aware of my breathing patterns they galloped along even faster. His concern was rising with each gasping breath I tried to take.

"Breathe, breathe, just one deep breath at a time," he continued in a low voice, "you are okay, you are alright. You are safe, no one can hurt you, you're okay, just breathe slowly."

I tried to calm down. I swear to you that I really did try to calm down but it was like I was so far gone I couldn't even gain control of myself. He took the glass of water from me and set it on the bedside dresser. I couldn't get enough air, I couldn't.

"Hannah, please," he whispered and cupped my face, "you need to breathe. There you go, cry if you need to. You're okay. You're alright. Nothing will happen to you here. Just breathe."

I don't know what happened but I suddenly went from sputtering for air to sobbing. I didn't even know why I was crying, or what I'd dreamed about, or even how he'd known that I was terrified when I woke up, or what was going on. It was just emotion exploding and his body suddenly curled around mine under the covers and my face tucked into his shoulder and I was weeping like I wouldn't stop.

And that's the last thing I remember before slumber washed over me.

**|… | …|**

The sun was on my face. I cracked an eye open, was immediately blinded, then rolled over. My eyes felt puffy for some reason and my throat felt…gritty, like I'd been talking for hours on end. Wait a minute, the sun was on my face? I never woke up to enough light to bother me.

I rolled over and looked at my bedside clock, before I sat straight up in bed.

It was eleven o'clock.

What in the name of God?

Had I forgotten to set my alarm clock last night? I never ever slept in this late, not even when I was sick, and I couldn't understand what had happened to my internal alarm clock. Or the one on the dresser, for that matter. I scrambled off the bed, reaching for a button-down shirt and dress trousers, almost tripping and falling over something on the floor. While I wriggled into clothes, I made a call for a cab with the bedroom's house phone and urged them to get here as soon as possible. In record time, I flew down the stairs and into the kitchen with the intention of just grabbing some fruit and getting out of the house but was stopped by a larger note (and larger breakfast plate) on the counter than normal.

_I wasn't sure whether or not to wake you but you needed it. I owled your boss on your behalf, asking him to give you the day off. I hope you slept in. Rest well._

Wait…what?

"What in the-"

And that's when last night came rushing over me. The crying, the water, the holding, _everything_.

Shit.

The house phone rang.

"Cabbie calling," said a heavily accented voice when I picked up, "I'm outside your place."

Shit, shit, shit. I couldn't remember what I'd dreamed but it must have been enough to have me disoriented enough to cry in front of a stranger. Shit-

"Ma'am?"

-I cleared my throat.

"Yes, I'll be right out."

_Bloody hell. _

I replaced the phone in its cradle. Wait, if he had already applied on my behalf for a day's leave, what had he said? Could I still walk in without needing a secondary explanation?

Shite, shite, shite.

I twisted the problem around and around on my way to work, while I was in line at the entrance, while the elevator dropped down to my floor. I grappled with it right up until the moment where I strode in through the door and everyone in the office looked up. The expressions ranged from surprised to worried to amused (Auror Pottleby), and the wide variety made me halt where I was.

"Yes?" I asked, slowly. "I realize you all received a note this morning-"

"Abbott, you do look sick." I'm certain my eyebrows lifted at that. McDowell could never be accused of subtlety or delicacy, that much was sure. "And you're…hm…more animated this morning."

"I beg your pardon?" I said even more slowly.

Half the people in the room nodded.

"Go back home," he said not unkindly. "You're ahead on your reports and we'll survive a day without you."

I blinked rapidly, trying to process what was happening and _why_, but couldn't really come up with a plausible explanation. Perhaps I looked much worse than I'd initially thought. But since I hadn't looked in the mirror, Merlin only knew. Shite. Alright. Well, I'd been summarily dismissed so there wasn't anything I could do about it. I nodded slowly and turned to leave.

"Rest up," someone called behind me.

I was too busy leaving to acknowledge the well-wishes. I took a sharp left to duck into the bathroom and was confronted with why they had looked so alarmed. My eyes were indeed puffy and slightly pink, my nose was red and swollen looking like I'd cried for weeks and not a few hours, and my hair wasn't in anything approaching a bun.

In essence, this was the least put together I'd looked since I'd become employed as an Auror.

Yes…I could certainly see cause for shock.

I briefly thought about fixing everything with my wand but since I should have done that before I went into the office, it would be a waste of time and energy. I left the Ministry and was back in the kitchen within thirty minutes. When I sat down at the island counter, I tried to figure out what on earth had happened last night.

Toward the start of the war, I'd suffered from nightmares. It's so strange to think about how soft I used to be, emotionally, and how much I'd been open to feeling. They were weekly – sometimes once a week, sometimes two nights in a row – and consistent. More than half of the time, I woke up hysterical and breathless. Alfred usually did wonders for my nerves afterwards but he was rarely there because of his role in the War efforts. Cho, on the other hand, had been my roommate. Our friendship was cemented not only by brief hugs and long dinners, but by tears and water and teasing and comfort. The nightmares had been terrible, nothing that I could ever really remember but as terrifying as a vague darkness where there should be light. The one time I did remember my nightmares, they were grisly and filled with death.

Once Alfie…well, once I lost Alfie, I suppose my mind didn't need to manufacture nightmares anymore.

So…

…the fact that I'd had one was truly worrisome. The fact that I didn't immediately remember what had happened was also worrisome. Yes, I'd woken up in virtually the same position as I'd fallen asleep while studying but that was no excuse for my mind just shoving it to the back. And what I didn't want to begin to examine – from close _or_ far – was the glaring elephant in the room.

I'd cried. And I'd let him comfort me.

A wave of guilt overwhelmed me. I'd let him comfort me. I'd been so good so _good _at maintaining distance from him for so long and that had crumbled in the dark of the night. And not just the emotional barrier but the physical barrier. I'd been careful to make sure I didn't touch him in any way-

-_his warm hand rubbing circles over my back_-

-and that was all up in smoke now too. One would think that my survival instincts and the way I felt about his family would ensure that I cut him to the quick every single time. But I'd never been able to get over nightmares on my own-

-_his fingers tangled in my hair and holding my face to his shoulder_-

_-_but heavens, this couldn't have gotten any worse. What should I do? What did I do right now? I tried to summon up the familiar hum of hatred that had been friend day in, day out. It was nowhere to be found and that threw me into the beginnings of a panic that I knew would lead to self-reflection. What do I _do_? Wait, what did he say in the owl to work? Did it even matter since I'd already been kicked out? A new feeling immediately kicked me in the heart - did he _sign _it? Did they know who he was? Of course my coworkers would recognize his name-

-_his steady breath and steady stream of words_-

-but did he sign it? So many things that I wouldn't know unless I asked. What did I do right now, though? Did he usually come back for lunch? My head snapped back at the thought so I could wrench my neck around to look at the clock. Twelve fifteen, otherwise known as the universal hour of lunch time. He seemed like he would be the type to come home for lunch.

This dreadful feeling of cowardice had me walking – actually it was much closer to jogging – up the stairs.

Where had my hatred gone? Why couldn't I sum it up now? Why hadn't I been able to summon it up last night? Why hadn't it automatically insulated me against his particular brand of concern? And why, in the name of heaven, did this happen? Did this mean the nightmares were back? I thought of nights with no sleep and prayed fervently as I jogged down the fourth floor hallway that that wasn't the case. When I got to my room, I stood indecisively for a long time. Cho would be working, probably, so it wasn't as if I could escape to her place. Maybe I could just go back into Diagon Alley…no, that sounded like an unnecessary waste of money. I didn't feel like going for a bit of a run so perhaps that was out too. All the worrying and overthinking-

There was a knock at the door.

Oh, God, _why_?

I jumped, startled out of my skin, then spun around. Should I say something? Or should I open the door since I was already standing? Oh God, I wasn't ready to see him or say anything or do anything or-

"Yes."

-and there went my mouth.

Oh, God.

The door opened a little way, and there he was.

It was like knowing that I'd been in his arms had made it impossible to ignore what he looked like. Maybe he knew that he was one of the rare ones whose hair was actually almost as dark as night and that's why that color made up the bulk of his wardrobe. It was certainly a purer 'black' than most Englishmen. He was impeccably dressed, silk shirt cracked at the collar, and silver cufflinks flashing at his wrists. That curl of hair above his right eye was so intriguing that my eyes almost got stuck there. He looked as calm as he usually did.

I had no idea what my face was doing.

_Please, God, let me get angry. _

Please.

"I just wanted to check on you," he said. "But I can see that you're up and running."

It was really hard work to keep my eyes on his but I nodded dumbly.

"Your shoes are on. Did you end up going in?"

His lips quirked up into a faint smile and my eyes suddenly had all the trouble in the world remaining on his. I nodded, cleared my throat, spoke.

"I thought maybe I could get some work done." Not even a hint of anger. I tried to recall my loss, his father, the way it had felt to wish him ill before we moved in together. I came up with a whole lot of nothing. "But they sent me back so here I am."

"Here you are." His faint smile became more pronounced. I struggled to keep from staring. God damn this bond. I breathed easier when his smile faded away. "Would you…well, would you care for some lunch? I don't usually come back-"

"No," I blurted out.

His surprise was quickly followed by a flash of disappointment, then a studied blankness.

"Rest well."

He closed the door. I caught my breath.

**|… T …|**

I don't know why I'd thought things would be different after last night. Last night had been…different. Unusual. Absurd, really. Physical proximity was waking up every other thing inside of me, without the presence of an emotional bond. I could feel her when she was in the house. I was starting to be able to figure out where she was according to this stupid mystical feeling, and even though I really couldn't decipher her moods and emotions, I had woken up to a vague sense of unease. I went down to the kitchen to get a glass of water to take back up to bed with me. On the stairs, the unease ballooned out of control, right before I heard a strangled sound.

I have never moved so fast in my life.

It looked like she came back into consciousness right as I rushed through her bedroom door. Her eyes were wide and unseeing, terrifying with how _blind_ she looked even though she was looking at me.

"Merlin-"

She was breathing too hard, too fast, too erratically. I broke our magic rule and did something wandless to check if we were the only ones in the house. We were. So this was a nightmare?

"Abbott, what on earth?"

Her breathing sped up – it sounded impossible, there was no way she was actually pulling in enough oxygen with these shallow breaths – and I crossed the room to sit on her bed. I know I pushed the glass of water into her hands and made her drink. I don't recall quite what came out of my mouth but it took a very long time for her to calm down. The most shocking moment came when she just up and burst into tears, still looking terrified, and I felt like my own eyes were about ready to fill.

I didn't think about making her feel better, I just…well, I don't know but whatever I did must have worked. I held her until she stopped crying and when she stopped crying, she fell asleep. It might have been minutes after she fell asleep or an hour, I didn't really know. But her breathing was so even and she was so warm that I couldn't totally bear to leave her. I kept rubbing circles into her back. Her hair was everywhere, sort of curly towards the ends. Or not curly, rather, but definitely not straight, but then again the twilight made all the shapes crazy. It was soft. She was softer. She breathed in, her nose still buried in the crook of my neck, and then expelled it all in a sound that reminded me of puppies.

How terrifying is it, to hold something, to get a glimpse of what Abott and I might actually have been like if I wasn't who I was?

I wasn't much for emotion but I felt…

…impossibly sad.

I'd lost this, whatever potential for a happy ending I might have had before I'd even had the chance to grab it. It was my choice to join the Death Eaters. It was my choice to take the Dark Mark, to stand by as countless people were tortured in front of me. And the lives my father had taken…

I closed my eyes.

How awful it had been, to hold her in the dark and know that waking up next to her was simply out of the question.

I hadn't left for another hour and it was torture extracting myself.

And now here I was, on the other side of her bedroom door wondering why for a second – _just _a second – I'd forgotten our places in this relationship.

The door swung open.

"I…I-uh," she looked sheepish, "I don't know what I was thinking. Yes, I would lo-…I mean, yes, I will eat lunch. With you."

"Yes," I said hurriedly, "I mean I'm still making some. Well, nothing fancy. But sandwiches, so I can get back to work."

"Of course," she said with a nod.

Of course.

Hm, she was sheepish? Nervous?

It was making me a little nervous too.

"Do you ever get the chance to sleep in?" I regretted the words as soon as they left my mouth, Maybe she didn't want an immediate reminder of what had happened last night. I hastened to amend my words. "It seems as if you work a lot, but like to get out rather early."

She didn't seem to stop walking so I supposed it was alright.

"I-…yes, well, no." Perhaps she _was _nervous. "No, I don't really sleep in during the week, anyway. I've gotten used to being up at first light."

"What about weekends?" I asked when we got to the kitchen. I moved to the pantry and she sat. "Do you sleep in then?"

"No." Her voice sounded a tad bit thoughtful, as opposed to her usual coolness. "I mean, sometimes. But my internal alarm clock doesn't seem to allow for sleeping in. Even when I'm ill, I still wake up early."

"I don't know anyone who can't sleep when they're ill," I said over my shoulder. "Usually, it's quite the opposite. Did you want slicked chicken or turkey?"

"Chicken, please."

I put everything together for her first, then placed the plate in front of her. I wasn't trying to watch her eat (okay, well, I wasn't not trying to watch her eat). If she was feeling somewhat warmer towards me today, I would grab the opportunity with both hands. I waited until she swallowed her first bite.

"Did I see a Plunko's note on the table? Do you use those too?'

Finally, a faint smile on her face.

"The Weasley twins' are so amazing," she said. "Even as I'd bought my first set, I didn't really think it would work."

"Definitely one of the most useful inventions yet," I agreed. I got a glass of pumpkin juice and put that in her front of her too. "It's almost like what the Muggles do with telephones, except its instant writing instead of talking."

"Once I convinced Cho to buy one, she was hooked too." This time, she definitely smiled at me and I resisted a bubble of happiness. "It's really useful for when she's gone."

So, she was very close to Cho Chang. I wondered if that was the only person she was close to, but wasn't sure whether we would be okay to discuss that much this early.

"I actually don't use them very much, but I know they are quite popular." I shrugged. "I see a lot of them in the Ministry on the rare occasion I find myself in there. I have a feeling they'll be more and more popular."

"I do too. I've never asked but where is your office?"

"Diagon Alley," I answered easily.

She looked mildly impressed.

"And did you and um…your partner…know where you wanted it to be or was it more of an accident?"

"The location rather just happened," I smiled, "Zabini is quite logical. He's also very persuasive. He could talk a heiress out of her inheritance and leaving her feeling pleased and happy about the loss."

She smiled again and it was like a gift.

"Cho's something like that. Except she never appears insistent – it's more that she says exactly what she wants and the world seems to scramble to give it to her." She finished the last bite. "It's actually a little awe-inspiring, watching her get her way."

"We usually just let Zabini talk our way into good deals," I agreed. "It's a gift."

There was a moment there, where we just smiled at each other, where it felt like everything in the world was slipping away and there was nothing else but her eyes and the quirk at her lips. And then the muffled ring of the grandfather clock upstairs broke the silence. I took her plate to the sink but she stopped me with a hand on the other side of the plate.

"I'll wash it," she waved me away from the sink, "make your sandwich. You probably have to return to work."

I acquiesced quietly, made my sandwich, wrapped it up, and put everything away, and turned to catch her gaze moving to some high corner of the kitchen.

"I'll," I stopped and cleared my throat, "I'll be seeing you. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon."

She didn't smile but she nodded.

It was an amazing start.


End file.
